Request data via the AIMS Data Platform API

Source: R/page_data.R

A function that communicates with the the AIMS Data Platform via the AIMS Data Platform API

page_data(
  doi,
  filters = NULL,
  api_key = NULL,
  summary = NA,
  aims_version = NA,
  verbose = FALSE
)

Arguments

doi

A Digital Object Identifier for a chosen AIMS data series

filters

A list containing a set of filters for the data query (see Details).

api_key

An AIMS Data Platform API Key

summary

Should summary tables ("summary-by-series" or "summary-by-deployment") or daily aggregated data ("daily") be returned instead of full data (see Details)?

aims_version

A character string defining the version of database. Must be "/v1.0" or "-v2.0". If none is provided, then "-v2.0" (the most recent) is used.

verbose

Should links be printed to screen? Used for debugging only

Value

aims_data returns a data.frame of class aimsdf.

If summary %in% c("summary-by-series", "summary-by-deployment"), the output shows the summary information for the target dataset (i.e. weather or temperature loggers) (NB: currently, summary only works for the temperature logger database). If summary is not passed as an additional argument, then the output contains raw monitoring data. If summary = "daily", then the output contains mean daily aggregated monitoring data. The output also contains five attributes (empty strings if summary is passed as an additional argument):

  • metadataa DOI link containing the metadata record for the data series.

  • citationthe citation information for the particular dataset.

  • parametersThe measured parameters comprised in the output.

  • typeThe type of dataset. Either "monitoring" if summary is not specified, "monitoring (daily aggregation)" if summary = "daily", or a "summary-by-" otherwise.

  • targetThe input target.

Details

The AIMS Data Platform R Client provides easy access to data sets for R applications to the AIMS Data Platform API. The AIMS Data Platform requires an API Key for requests, which can be obtained at this link. It is preferred that API Keys are not stored in code. We recommend storing the environment variable AIMS_DATAPLATFORM_API_KEY permanently under the user's .Renviron file in order to load the API Key automatically.

There are two types of data currently available through the AIMS Data Platform API: Weather and Sea Water Temperature Loggers. They are searched internally via unique DOI identifiers. Only one data type at a time can be passed to the argument target.

A list of arguments for filters can be exposed for both Weather and Sea Water Temperature Loggers using function aims_expose_attributes.

Note that at present the user can inspect the range of dates for the temperature loggers data only (see usage of argument summary in the examples below). For that, the argument summary must be either the string "summary-by-series" or "summary-by-deployment". In those cases, time filters will be ignored.

Details about available dates for each dataset and time series can be accessed via Metadata on AIMS Data Platform API. We raise this caveat here because these time boundaries are very important; data are collected at very small time intervals, a window of just a few days can yield very large datasets. The query will return and error if it reaches the system's memory capacity.

For that same reason, from version 1.1.0 onwards, we are offering the possibility of downloading a mean daily aggregated version. For that, the user must set summary = "daily". In this particular case, query filter will be taken into account.

Author

AIMS Datacentre adc@aims.gov.au