friendlyloader

The goal of friendlyloader is to help with routine running of scripts where you expect to find a file in a certain location, but where the name of the file can be subject to minor changes, such as a change in date or using "_" or "-" instead of spaces.

Installation

You can install the development version of friendlyloader like so:

remotes::install_github("RosalynLP/friendlyloader")

How to use

This package includes wrapper functions for utils::readcsv, readxl::read_excel and openxlsx::read.xlsx. Namely:

friendlyloader::read_csv_with_options
friendlyloader::read_excel_with_options
friendlyloader::read_xlsx_with_options

You supply the usual arguments to these functions, with the optional additional choices:

useRstudio (default TRUE). A boolean indicating whether to pick an alternative file using interactive R Studio windows, or (when set to FALSE) whether to use the terminal.
recursive (default TRUE). A boolean. Only impactful when useRstudio == FALSE. Whether to look for files recursively or only in the chosen directory.

Creating a friendly loader for a different file type

If you want to load a file other than csv or Excel you can easily create your own loader using create_loader_with_options(). This takes in a function for loading your desired filetype and outputs a friendly version of that function. For example, for loading RDS files using readRDS():

read_rds_with_options <- create_loader_with_options(readRDS)

read_rds_with_options("some_arbitrary_file.rds")

Matching filenames with dates stripped out

Sometimes you want to load a file in a given location but the date of the file is subject to change. match_base_filename allows you to load the file without triggering an interactive set of options, which can be useful if you are running a server job or Rmarkdown:

# This will read fruits_colours.xlsx 
openxlsx::read.xlsx(match_base_filename("20220328_fruits_colours.xlsx"))

Note that there can be only one file called *fruits*colours*xlsx in the given directory or else the call to this function is ambiguous and it will fail.

Using the terminal selector - when `useRstudio == FALSE`

Loading a csv

This is based on the function utils::read.csv

library(friendlyloader)

# Creating test data frame and writing to csv
df <- data.frame (Fruit = c("Apple", "Orange", "Pear"), Colour = c("Red", "Orange", "Green"))
write.csv(df, "fruits_colours.csv", row.names = FALSE)

# Trying to load csv but with slightly wrong filename
read_csv_with_options("20220328_fruits_colours.csv", useRstudio = FALSE)

#>Could not find file 20220328_fruits_colours.csv. Searching for possible alternatives.
#>Should I use one of the files below?
#># A tibble: 1 × 2
#>  Filename           Subdirectory
#>  <chr>              <chr>       
#>1 fruits_colours.csv .           
#>Type the number to use, or type 'No' and press Enter.     1
#>   Fruit Colour
#>1  Apple    Red
#>2 Orange Orange
#>3   Pear  Green
#>

Loading the first sheet of an Excel file

There are two options which work in the same way. One is based on the function readxl::read_excel, and the other is based on openxlsx::read.xlsx. The names of these functions are read_excel_with_options and read_xlsx_with_options, respectively.

library(friendlyloader)

# Creating test data frame and writing to csv
df <- data.frame (Fruit = c("Apple", "Orange", "Pear"), Colour = c("Red", "Orange", "Green"))
writexl::write_xlsx(df, "fruits_colours.xlsx")

# Trying to load csv but with slightly wrong filename
read_excel_with_options("fruits-colours.xlsx", useRstudio = FALSE)

#>Could not find file fruits-colours.csv. Searching for possible alternatives.
#>Should I use one of the files below?
#># A tibble: 2 × 2
#>  Filename            Subdirectory
#>  <chr>               <chr>       
#>1 fruits_colours.csv  .           
#>2 fruits_colours.xlsx .           
#>Type the number to use, or type 'No' and press Enter.     2
#># A tibble: 3 × 2                                                                                                
#>  Fruit  Colour
#>  <chr>  <chr> 
#>1 Apple  Red   
#>2 Orange Orange
#>3 Pear   Green 
#>

Loading all sheets of an Excel file

Same as above but use read_all_excel_sheets() rather than read_excel_with_options(). This uses the openxlsx package to read the information.

RosalynLP/friendlyloader