Metadata columns in wrong order when some item has no metadata

[montesmariana]

If there are multiple data objects or collections and one of them has no metadata, the order of the AVU-parts for the existing metadata is wrong: attribute-units-value, i.e. alphabetically.

rirods:::metadata_reorder() is meant to fix this, but it's failing silently when it runs into the empty dataframe of the item with no metadata.

At the bottom of the example I suggest an alternative Map() call for rirods:::metadata_reorder(), although this might also end up linked to #12 (this could be dealt with in a custom printing method).

library(rirods)
library(tibble)
create_irods("http://localhost/irods-rest/0.9.3", "/tempZone/home", overwrite = TRUE)
iauth('rods', 'rods')
# Problem ----
files <- ils(metadata = TRUE)
files
#>                     logical_path      metadata        type
#> 1 /tempZone/home/rods/collection          NULL  collection
#> 2    /tempZone/home/rods/foo.rds foo, baz, bar data_object

# The order of the columns is alphabetical
files$metadata
#> [[1]]
#> data frame with 0 columns and 0 rows
#> 
#> [[2]]
#>   attribute units value
#> 1       foo   baz   bar

# Diagnosis ----
# Silent error in `metadata_reorder()`

# code from `ils()`:
out <- rirods:::irods_rest_call('list', 'GET', list(
  `logical-path` = rirods:::.rirods$current_dir,
  stat = as.integer(FALSE),
  metadata = as.integer(TRUE),
  offset = 0,
  limit = 100
), FALSE)
x <- httr2::resp_body_json(
  out,
  check_type = FALSE,
  simplifyVector = TRUE
)$`_embedded`
x$metadata
#> [[1]]
#> data frame with 0 columns and 0 rows
#> 
#> [[2]]
#>   attribute units value
#> 1       foo   baz   bar

# what `metadata_reorder()` tries to do
Map(function(x) {x <- x[ ,c("attribute", "value", "units")]; x}, x$metadata)
#> Error in `[.data.frame`(x, , c("attribute", "value", "units")): undefined columns selected

# because it's called silently, it doesn't tell us there is an error with the empty dataframe

# Suggestion ----
# replacement for the `Map()` call in `metadata_reorder()`
Map(function(x) {if (length(x) > 0) x[ ,c("attribute", "value", "units")] else x}, x$metadata)
#> [[1]]
#> data frame with 0 columns and 0 rows
#> 
#> [[2]]
#>   attribute value units
#> 1       foo   bar   baz

^{Created on 2023-03-17 with reprex v2.0.2}