pointblank (version 0.6.0)

create_informant: Create a pointblank informant object

Description

The create_informant() function creates an informant object, which is used in an information management workflow. The overall aim of this workflow is to record, collect, and generate useful information on data tables. We can supply as information that is useful for describing a particular data table. The informant object created by the create_informant() function takes information-focused functions (the info_*() series of functions).

Usage

create_informant(
  tbl = NULL,
  read_fn = NULL,
  agent = NULL,
  tbl_name = NULL,
  label = NULL,
  lang = NULL,
  locale = NULL
)

Arguments

tbl

The input table. This can be a data frame, a tibble, a tbl_dbi object, or a tbl_spark object. Alternatively, a function can be used to read in the input data table with the read_fn argument (in which case, tbl can be NULL).

read_fn

A function that's used for reading in the data. Even if a tbl is provided, this function will be invoked to obtain the data (i.e., the read_fn takes priority). There are two ways to specify a read_fn: (1) using a function (e.g., function() { <table reading code> }) or, (2) with an R formula expression.

agent

A pointblank agent object. This object can be used instead of supplying a table in tbl or a table-reading function in read_fn.

tbl_name

A optional name to assign to the input table object. If no value is provided, a name will be generated based on whatever information is available.

label

An optional label for the information report. If no value is provided, a label will be generated based on the current system time. Markdown can be used here to make the label more visually appealing (it will appear in the header area of the information report).

lang

The language to use for the information report (a summary table that provides all of the available information for the table. By default, NULL will create English ("en") text. Other options include French ("fr"), German ("de"), Italian ("it"), Spanish ("es"), Portuguese, ("pt"), Chinese ("zh"), and Russian ("ru").

locale

An optional locale ID to use for formatting values in the information report according the locale's rules. Examples include "en_US" for English (United States) and "fr_FR" for French (France); more simply, this can be a language identifier without a country designation, like "es" for Spanish (Spain, same as "es_ES").

Value

A ptblank_informant object.

Figures

Function ID

1-3

See Also

Other Planning and Prep: action_levels(), col_schema(), create_agent(), db_tbl(), scan_data(), validate_rmd()

Examples

# NOT RUN {
# Let's walk through how we can
# generate some useful information for a
# really small table; it's actually
# called `small_table` and we can find
# it as a dataset in this package
small_table

# Create a pointblank `informant`
# object with `create_informant()`
# and the `small_table` dataset
informant <- 
  create_informant(
    read_fn = ~small_table,
    tbl_name = "small_table",
    label = "An example."
  )

# This function creates some information
# without any extra help by profiling
# the supplied table object; it adds
# the sections: (1) 'table' and
# (2) 'columns' and we can print the
# object to see the information report

# Alternatively, we can get the same report
# by using `get_informant_report()`
report <- get_informant_report(informant)
class(report)

# }