dataRetrieval (version 2.5.1)

importRDB1: Function to return data from the NWIS RDB 1.0 format

Description

This function accepts a url parameter that already contains the desired NWIS site, parameter code, statistic, startdate and enddate. It is not recommended to use the RDB format for importing multi-site data.

Usage

importRDB1(obs_url, asDateTime = TRUE, convertType = TRUE, tz = "")

Arguments

obs_url

character containing the url for the retrieval or a file path to the data file.

asDateTime

logical, if TRUE returns date and time as POSIXct, if FALSE, Date

convertType

logical, defaults to TRUE. If TRUE, the function will convert the data to dates, datetimes, numerics based on a standard algorithm. If false, everything is returned as a character

tz

character to set timezone attribute of datetime. Default is an empty quote, which converts the datetimes to UTC (properly accounting for daylight savings times based on the data's provided tz_cd column). Possible values to provide are "America/New_York","America/Chicago", "America/Denver","America/Los_Angeles", "America/Anchorage","America/Honolulu","America/Jamaica","America/Managua","America/Phoenix", and "America/Metlakatla"

Value

A data frame with the following columns:

Name	Type
Description	agency_cd
character	The NWIS code for the agency reporting the data
site_no	character
The USGS site number	datetime
POSIXct	The date and time of the value converted to UTC (if asDateTime = TRUE),
	character
or raw character string (if asDateTime = FALSE)	tz_cd
character	The time zone code for datetime
code	character
Any codes that qualify the corresponding value	value
numeric	The numeric value for the parameter
tz_cd_reported	The originally reported time zone

Note that code and value are repeated for the parameters requested. The names are of the form XD_P_S, where X is literal, D is an option description of the parameter, P is the parameter code, and S is the statistic code (if applicable). If a date/time (dt) column contained incomplete date and times, a new column of dates and time was inserted. This could happen when older data was reported as dates, and newer data was reported as a date/time.There are also several useful attributes attached to the data frame:

Name	Type
Description	url
character	The url used to generate the data
queryTime	POSIXct
The time the data was returned	comment
character	Header comments from the RDB file

Examples

siteNumber <- "02177000"
startDate <- "2012-09-01"
endDate <- "2012-10-01"
offering <- "00003"
property <- "00060"

obs_url <- constructNWISURL(siteNumber,property,
         startDate,endDate,"dv",format="tsv")
## Not run: 
# data <- importRDB1(obs_url)
# 
# urlMultiPcodes <- constructNWISURL("04085427",c("00060","00010"),
#          startDate,endDate,"dv",statCd=c("00003","00001"),"tsv")
# multiData <- importRDB1(urlMultiPcodes)
# unitDataURL <- constructNWISURL(siteNumber,property,
#          "2013-11-03","2013-11-03","uv",format="tsv") #includes timezone switch
# unitData <- importRDB1(unitDataURL, asDateTime=TRUE)
# qwURL <- constructNWISURL(c('04024430','04024000'),
#           c('34247','30234','32104','34220'),
#          "2010-11-03","","qw",format="rdb") 
# qwData <- importRDB1(qwURL, asDateTime=TRUE, tz="America/Chicago")
# iceSite <- '04024000'
# start <- "2015-11-09"
# end <- "2015-11-24"
# urlIce <- constructNWISURL(iceSite,"00060",start, end,"uv",format="tsv")
# ice <- importRDB1(urlIce, asDateTime=TRUE)
# iceNoConvert <- importRDB1(urlIce, convertType=FALSE)
# ## End(Not run)
# User file:
filePath <- system.file("extdata", package="dataRetrieval")
fileName <- "RDB1Example.txt"
fullPath <- file.path(filePath, fileName)
importUserRDB <- importRDB1(fullPath)