R/owid.R

In piersyork/owidR: Import Data from Our World in Data

globalVariables(c("name", "code", "years", "values", "entity", "year", ".", "title"))

#' Internal function to check whether there is internet, if there is internet check whether we can connect to owid
#'
#' @param url The url to check the connection to
#'
#' @noRd
#'
#' @return boolean
#'
#'
check_internet <- function(url) {
  out <- FALSE
  if (!curl::has_internet()) {
    message("No internet connection available: returning blank data.table")
  } else if (httr::http_error(url)) {
    message(paste0("Could not connect to ", url, ", site may be down. Returning blank data.table"))
  } else {
    out <- TRUE
  }
  out
}


#' Search the data sources used in OWID charts
#'
#' @param term A search term
#'
#' @return A matrix of chart titles and chard ids
#' @export
#'
#' @examples
#' \donttest{
#' # returns the titles and chart_ids of all charts containing the word 'emissions'
#' owid_search("emissions")
#' }
#'
owid_search <- function(term) {
  message("this function is no longer working please use the ourworldindata.org website to search for datasets")
  as.matrix(data.table::data.table(term = NA, title = NA))
}

#' Get data from Our World in Data
#'
#' @description Get a dataset used in an OWID chart.
#'
#' @param chart_id The chart_id as returned by owid_search
#' @param rename Rename the value column. Currently only works if their is just one value column.
#' @param tidy.date If TRUE then a year column that should be a date column will automatically detected and transformed. If FALSE then the Year column will be kept as is. Defaults to TRUE.
#' @param ... Not to be used.
#'
#' @return A data.table of an owid dataset with the added class 'owid'.
#' @export
#'
#' @import magrittr data.table
#'
#' @examples
#' \donttest{
#' owid_search("emissions")
#' emissions <- owid("per-capita-ghg-emissions")
#' }
#'
owid <- function(chart_id = NULL, rename = NULL, tidy.date = TRUE, ...) {

  if (!check_internet(paste0("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/", chart_id, ".csv"))) {
    out <- data.table::data.table(entity = NA, year = NA, value = NA)
    class(out) <- c("owid.no.connection", class(out))
    return(out)
  }

  metadata <- jsonlite::fromJSON(paste0("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/", chart_id, ".metadata.json"))

  out <- data.table::fread(paste0("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/", chart_id, ".csv?useColumnShortNames=true"))

  names(out) <- tolower(names(out))

  n_rename <- length(rename)
  n_values <- length(colnames(out)) - 3

  if (!is.null(rename)) {
    if (!is.character(rename)) {
      stop("rename must be of class character")
    }
    if (n_rename == n_values) {
      colnames(out)[4:(3 + n_values)] <- rename
    } else {
      stop(paste0("Length of rename must be the same us number of value columns"))
    }
  }

  attributes(out)$data_info <- metadata$chart
  attributes(out)$chart_id <- chart_id
  class(out) <- c("owid", class(out))

  return(out)
}

#' Get the Our World in Data covid-19 dataset
#'
#' @return A dataframe with multiple variables on the covid-19 pandemic.
#' @export
#'
owid_covid <- function() {
  if (!check_internet("https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv")) {
    return(data.table::data.table())
  }

  data <- data.table::fread("https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv")
  class(data) <- c("owid", class(data))
  return(data)
}