How can I document data sets with roxygen?
Solution 1
Roxygen can be used anywhere within an R file (in other words, it doesn't have to be followed by a function). It can also be used to document any docType in the R documentation.
So you can just document your data in a separate block (something like this):
#' This is data to be included in my package
#'
#' @name data-name
#' @docType data
#' @author My Name \email{blahblah@@roxygen.org}
#' @references \url{data_blah.com}
#' @keywords data
NULL
Solution 2
As of roxygen2 >4.0.0, you can document the data object defined elsewhere by documenting the name of the object defined as a string:
#' This is data to be included in my package
#'
#' @author My Name \email{blahblah@@roxygen.org}
#' @references \url{data_blah.com}
"data-name"
Solution 3
I found it useful to study the examples in the ggplot2 package.
A few things of note:
- All the Roxygen code for datasets can be included in a single
.r
file in theR
directory of the package.
See for examples, the diamonds
dataset:
#' Prices of 50,000 round cut diamonds
#'
#' A dataset containing the prices and other attributes of almost 54,000
#' diamonds. The variables are as follows:
#'
#' \itemize{
#' \item price. price in US dollars (\$326--\$18,823)
#' \item carat. weight of the diamond (0.2--5.01)
#' \item cut. quality of the cut (Fair, Good, Very Good, Premium, Ideal)
#' \item colour. diamond colour, from J (worst) to D (best)
#' \item clarity. a measurement of how clear the diamond is (I1 (worst), SI1, SI2, VS1, VS2, VVS1, VVS2, IF (best))
#' \item x. length in mm (0--10.74)
#' \item y. width in mm (0--58.9)
#' \item z. depth in mm (0--31.8)
#' \item depth. total depth percentage = z / mean(x, y) = 2 * z / (x + y) (43--79)
#' \item table. width of top of diamond relative to widest point (43--95)
#' }
#'
#' @docType data
#' @keywords datasets
#' @name diamonds
#' @usage data(diamonds)
#' @format A data frame with 53940 rows and 10 variables
NULL
This results in a help file that looks like this:
![Karsten W.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BRrqa.png?s=256&g=1)
Karsten W.
Updated on June 07, 2022Comments
-
Karsten W. about 2 years
Is it possible to include .R files in the data directory of my package in the roxygen process?
I have put several .R files in the data directory. When they are sourced with data(), they read in raw data files and perform some transformations.
-
hadley over 14 yearsExcept you're better off using
NULL
instead ofroxygen()
so that you don't induce a run-time dependency onroxygen
-
Shane over 14 years@hadley: it might be nice to add an example like this into the roxygen vignette, and make the point about roxygen dependency? I found that to be a little confusing in terms of how to structure the files.
-
Karsten W. over 14 yearsThank you both Shane and Hadley for the excellent help. I see now much clearer how to use roxygen; and now R CMD check does not complain anymore. One question is left: Do I need to put the data documentation in the R subdirectory? It would be nice to teach roxygenize to look in the data directory, too...
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Shane over 14 years@Karsten: I tend to think that the only thing that should go in the data subdirectory is data. Roxygen provides literate programming as R code, so I like to have that all within my R files. But beyond that you might try this: roxygenize uses an environment variable "R.DIR". Set that to "data" instead and it should process R files in the data directory. @hadley: you could make a simple patch to allow for an R.DIR vector?
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hadley over 14 years@Shane: I've already complained about that to the roxygen devs, and it should change in the next release
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vlad1490 about 5 yearsProbably since that answer Roxygen documentation has changed. this is how it looks now
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Eli Holmes almost 3 yearsHow it works now works because 'Lazyload: true'. If you don't 'Lazyload', those data objects are not defined. In that case, you need to use the 'old' Roxygen2 code.
-
Faustin Gashakamba almost 3 years@hadley I am using roxygen2 now. Is this implemented in this version? I put an
.R
file to describe my data objects in there butR CMD Check
seems to not parse it.