R Package

Alternatively to downloading the data files, you can use the R package gerda to load the data into your R session. You can install the package from CRAN or get the development version from GitHub.

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

# Or install development version from GitHub
if (!requireNamespace("devtools", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("devtools")
}
devtools::install_github("hhilbig/gerda")

Main Functions

• gerda_data_list(print_table = TRUE): This function lists all available GERDA datasets along with their descriptions. Parameters:
  • print_table: If TRUE (default), prints a formatted table to the console and invisibly returns a tibble. If FALSE, directly returns the tibble without printing.
• load_gerda_web(file_name, verbose = FALSE, file_format = "rds"): This function loads a GERDA dataset from a web source. It takes the following parameters:
  • file_name: The name of the dataset to load (see gerda_data_list() for available options).
  • verbose: If set to TRUE, it prints messages about the loading process (default is FALSE).
  • file_format: Specifies the format of the file to load, either “rds” or “csv” (default is “rds”). Note that this only affects which file is downloaded, the data is always returned as a tibble. Therefore, changing this parameter currently does not affect the returned object.

The function includes fuzzy matching for file names and will suggest close matches if an exact match isn’t found.

Usage Examples

# Load the package
library(gerda)

# List available datasets
available_data <- gerda_data_list()

# Load a dataset
data_municipal_harm <- load_gerda_web("municipal_harm", 
  verbose = TRUE)

Note

For a complete list of available datasets and their descriptions, use the gerda_data_list() function. This function either prints a formatted table to the console and invisibly returns a tibble or directly returns the tibble without printing.

Feedback

As this package is a work in progress, feedback is welcome. Please send comments to hhilbig@ucdavis.edu or open an issue on the GitHub repository. The package is available on GitHub.