begin_key {ltertools}

Generate the Skeleton of a Column Key

Description

Creates the start of a 'column key' for harmonizing data. A column key includes a column for the file names to be harmonized into a single data object as well as a column for the column names in those files. Finally, it includes a column indicating the tidied name that corresponds with each raw column name. Harmonization can accept this key object and use it to rename all raw column names–in a reproducible way–to standardize across datasets. Currently supports raw files of the following formats: CSV, TXT, XLS, and XLSX

Usage

begin_key(
  raw_folder = NULL,
  data_format = c("csv", "txt", "xls", "xlsx"),
  guess_tidy = FALSE
)

Arguments

raw_folder

(character) folder / folder path containing data files to include in key

data_format

(character) file extensions to identify within the raw_folder. Default behavior is to search for all supported file types.

guess_tidy

(logical) whether to attempt to "guess" what the tidy name equivalent should be for each raw column name. This is accomplished via coercion to lowercase and removal of special character/repeated characters. If FALSE (the default) the "tidy_name" column is returned empty

Value

(dataframe) skeleton of column key

Examples

# Generate two simple tables
## Dataframe 1
df1 <- data.frame("xx" = c(1:3),
                  "unwanted" = c("not", "needed", "column"),
                  "yy" = letters[1:3])
## Dataframe 2
df2 <- data.frame("LETTERS" = letters[4:7],
                  "NUMBERS" = c(4:7),
                  "BONUS" = c("plantae", "animalia", "fungi", "protista"))

# Generate a local folder for exporting
temp_folder <- tempdir()

# Export both files to that folder
utils::write.csv(x = df1, file = file.path(temp_folder, "df1.csv"), row.names = FALSE)
utils::write.csv(x = df2, file = file.path(temp_folder, "df2.csv"), row.names = FALSE)

# Generate a column key with "guesses" at tidy column names
ltertools::begin_key(raw_folder = temp_folder, data_format = "csv", guess_tidy = TRUE)