arealDB (version 0.9.4)

adb_init: Initiate an areal database

Description

Initiate a geospatial database or register a database that exists at the root path.

Usage

adb_init(
  root,
  version,
  author,
  licence,
  ontology,
  gazetteer = NULL,
  top = NULL,
  staged = TRUE
)

Value

No return value, called for the side effect of creating the directory structure of the new areal database and tables that contain the database metadata.

Arguments

root

character(1)
path to the root directory that contains or shall contain an areal database.

version

character(1)
version identifier for this areal database.

author

character(1)
authors that contributed to building this areal database. Should be a list with items "cre" (creator), "aut" (authors) and "ctb" (contributors).

licence

character(1)
licence (link) for this areal database.

ontology

list(.)
named list with the path(s) of ontologies, where the list name identifies the variable that shall be matched with the ontology at the path.

gazetteer

character(1)
path to the gazetteer that holds the (hierarchical) information of territorial units used in this database.

top

character(1)
the label of the class in the gazetteer that represents the top-most unit (e.g. country) of the areal database that shall be started.

staged

logical(1)
whether or not the file structure is arranged according to stages (with geometries and tables separated), or merely as input/output (of all types).

Details

This is the first function that is run in a project, as it initiates the areal database by creating the default sub-directories and initial inventory tables. When a database has already been set up, this function is used to register that path in the options of the current R session.

Examples

adb_init(root = paste0(tempdir(), "/newDB"),
         version = "1.0.0", licence = "CC-BY-0.4",
         author = list(cre = "Gordon Freeman", aut = "Alyx Vance", ctb = "The G-Man"),
         gazetteer = paste0(tempdir(), "/newDB/territories.rds"),
         top = "al1",
         ontology = list(var = paste0(tempdir(), "/newDB/ontology.rds")))

getOption("adb_path"); getOption("gazetteer_path")