This is an R SDK for the COVID-19 API, as published by Public Health England on Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK. The source code of this library is housed on GitHub.
The API supplies the latest data for the COVID-19 outbreak in the United Kingdom.
The endpoint for the data provided using this SDK is:
https://api.coronavirus.data.gov.uk/v1/data
The SDK is also available for Python and JavaScript.
You can install the released version of ukcovid19 from CRAN with:
install.packages("ukcovid19")or install from GitHub as follows:
remotes::install_github("publichealthengland/coronavirus-dashboard-api-R-sdk")Using this SDK will bypass the pagination process. You will always download the entire
dataset unless the latest_by argument is defined.
To use the library, run:
library(ukcovid19)or simply prepend the function names with ukcovid19; for instance:
ukcovid19::get_options()We would like to extract the number of new cases, cumulative cases, new deaths and cumulative deaths for England using the API.
We start off by constructing the value of the filters parameter:
query_filters <- c(
'areaType=nation',
'areaName=England'
)Next step is to construct the value of the structure parameter. To do so, we need to
find out the name of the metric in which we are interested. You can find this information
in the Developer's Guide on the Coronavirus Dashboard website.
In the case of this example, the metrics are as follows:
newCasesByPublishDate: New cases (by publish date)cumCasesByPublishDate: Cumulative cases (by publish date)newDeathsByDeathDate: New deaths (by death date)cumDeathsByDeathDate: Cumulative deaths (by death date)
In its simplest form, we construct the structure as follows:
cases_and_deaths = list(
date = "date",
areaName = "areaName",
areaCode = "areaCode",
newCasesByPublishDate = "newCasesByPublishDate",
cumCasesByPublishDate = "cumCasesByPublishDate",
newDeaths28DaysByPublishDate = "newDeaths28DaysByPublishDate",
cumDeaths28DaysByPublishDate = "cumDeaths28DaysByPublishDate"
)Now, we can use filters and structure to get the data from the API:
data <- get_data(
filters = query_filters,
structure = cases_and_deaths
)
# Showing the head:
print(head(data)) date areaName areaCode newCasesByPublishDate cumCasesByPublishDate newDeaths28DaysByPublishDate cumDeaths28DaysByPublishDate
1 2020-08-19 England E92000001 707 277516 15 36757
2 2020-08-18 England E92000001 975 276809 11 36742
3 2020-08-17 England E92000001 634 275834 3 36731
4 2020-08-16 England E92000001 952 275200 3 36728
5 2020-08-15 England E92000001 934 274248 2 36725
6 2020-08-14 England E92000001 1284 273314 10 36723
To see the timestamp for the last update, run:
timestamp <- last_update(
filters = query_filters,
structure = cases_and_deaths
)
print(timestamp)[1] "2020-08-02 14:50:59 GMT"
To get the latest data by a specific metric, use the latest_by argument as follows:
all_nations = c(
"areaType=nation"
)
data <- get_data(
filters = all_nations,
structure = cases_and_deaths,
latest_by = "newCasesByPublishDate"
)
print(data) date areaName areaCode newCasesByPublishDate cumCasesByPublishDate newDeathsByDeathDate cumDeathsByDeathDate
1 2020-08-02 England E92000001 676 262746 NA NA
2 2020-08-02 Scotland S92000003 31 18676 NA NA
3 2020-08-02 Wales W92000004 37 17315 NA NA
Developed and maintained by Public Health England.
Copyright (c) 2020, Public Health England.