validate: Inspect a dataset to anticipate problems before writing to a REDCap project

Description

This set of functions inspect a base::data.frame() to anticipate problems before writing with REDCap's API.

Usage

validate_for_write( d )
validate_no_logical( data_types, stop_on_error )
validate_field_names( field_names, stop_on_error = FALSE )
validate_field_names_collapsed( field_names_collapsed, stop_on_error = FALSE )

Value

A tibble::tibble(), where each potential violation is a row. The two columns are:

field_name: The name of the base::data.frame() that might cause problems during the upload.
field_index: The position of the field. (For example, a value of '1' indicates the first column, while a '3' indicates the third column.)
concern: A description of the problem potentially caused by the field.
suggestion: A potential solution to the concern.

Arguments

data_types: The data types of the base::data.frame() corresponding to the REDCap project.
stop_on_error: If TRUE, an error is thrown for violations. Otherwise, a dataset summarizing the problems is returned.
d: The base::data.frame() containing the dataset used to update the REDCap project.
field_names: The names of the fields/variables in the REDCap project. Each field is an individual element in the character vector.
field_names_collapsed: The names of the fields/variables in the REDCap project. All fields are combined in a single vector element, separated by commas.

Author

Will Beasley

Details

All functions listed in the Usage section above inspect a specific aspect of the dataset. The validate_for_write() function executes all these individual validation checks. It allows the client to check everything with one call.

Currently it verifies that the dataset

does not contain logical values (because REDCap typically wants 0/1 values instead of FALSE/TRUE).
starts with a lowercase letter, and subsequent optional characters are a sequence of (a) lowercase letters, (b) digits 0-9, and/or (c) underscores. (The exact regex is ^[a-z][0-9a-z_]*$.)

If you encounter additional types of problems when attempting to write to REDCap, please tell us by creating a new issue, and we'll incorporate a new validation check into this function.

References

The official documentation can be found on the 'API Help Page' and 'API Examples' pages on the REDCap wiki (i.e., https://community.projectredcap.org/articles/456/api-documentation.html and https://community.projectredcap.org/articles/462/api-examples.html). If you do not have an account for the wiki, please ask your campus REDCap administrator to send you the static material.

Examples

Run this code

d <- data.frame(
  record_id      = 1:4,
  flag_logical   = c(TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE),
  flag_Uppercase = c(4, 6, 8, 2)
)
REDCapR::validate_for_write(d = d)

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