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jwildfire edited this page Jan 21, 2019 · 31 revisions

Overview

The datadigest package provides a simple interactive framework for exploring data. You can:

  • Try it out at the demo site
  • Read more in the manuscript
  • Get technical details in this wiki
  • Explore common use cases in the vignette
  • View the R package page on CRAN
  • See a screenshot below

codebook image

Usage

Installing and using the codebook typically only requires a few lines of code. To summarize a single file:

install.packages("datadigest")
library("datadigest")
codebook(data = mtcars)

Or to explore all of the data loaded in the current R session:

install.packages("datadigest")
library("datadigest")
explorer(data = NULL, addEnv = TRUE)

To use the development version of the package, install using devtools::install_github("RhoInc/datadigest") instead of via install.packages("datadigest"). Also, note that the name of this repo changed from "rhoinc/codebook" to "rhoinc/datadigest" prior to the release of v1.0 on CRAN. Any links to the codebook repo will automatically redirect.

More detailed information about using the codebook package can be found in subsequent pages of the Wiki.

Technical details

The package serves as an R interface for Rho's web-codebook JavaScript library, which depends on webcharts and d3.js JavaScript libraries. These 3 libraries are included in the package. The r version of the codebook has been built using the htmlwidgets framework and consists of two key functions: codebook() and explorer(). codebook() delivers an interactive interface for a single data frame while explorer() extends this functionality, allowing the user to navigate through multiple data frames.

While codebook() and explorer() can be loaded as HTML widgets using their respective R functions, the package also includes a dedicated Shiny application for each. The shiny applications offer easy access to data currently loaded in the R session, the ability to upload data files, and/or the ability to download a static or interactive data summary. Following package installation, RStudio users may access the two applications via the toolbar as RStudio add-ins.

Additional information

  • Github Repository for the web-codebook JavaScript library can be found here.
  • Slides and Paper from PhUSE Connect 2018