normanR: An R client for the Network Database System REST API

Rafal Urniaz, PhD

Overview

normanR provides helper functions to query the Norman Network Database System (NDS) REST API and process the retrieved chemical and ecotoxicological data.

The package enables researchers in environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology to retrieve chemical substance data, ecotoxicological parameters, and EMPODAT monitoring datasets, handle batch queries across multiple identifiers, flatten complex nested API responses into clean tabular structures, and organize local JSON data files.

Key Features

• **Direct querying of all main NDS modules (susdat, ecotox, empodat, passive) with strict input parameter validation with automated pagination and optional disk caching.
• Nested Field Extraction (extract_norman_fields): Recursively search and extract nested JSON list outputs into tidy data.frame formats.
• Offline File Organization (split_json_files_by_key, split_json_files_by_pattern): Partition bulk offline JSON files into structured subdirectories based on specific field keys or regular expressions.
• API Metadata Lookup (load_api_definitions): Load API dictionary definitions from local JSON storage.

Installation

You can install the development version of normanR directly from GitHub using devtools or remotes:

# Install pack if not already installed
if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("pak")
}

# Install normanR from GitHub
pak::pak("urniaz/normanR/normanR")

or from CRAN

# Install normanR from CRAN
install.packages("normanR")

Quick Start / Usage Example

Single API Query & Field Extraction

library(normanR)

# Fetch substance data by CAS number using the core function
data_cas <- get_norman_data(
  module = "susdat",
  parameter = "casrn",
  value = "1490-04-6",
  format = "json"
)

data_cas$`Compound name`

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Software Metadata

Metadata element	Description
Current Code Version	1.3.77
Permanent Code Repository	https://github.com/urniaz/normanR
Legal Code License	GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3)
Code Versioning System	Git
Software Language	R (>= 4.1.0)
Dependencies	httr2, jsonlite
Testing Framework	testthat (>= 3.0.0)

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