Feature Request: Create file templates

[biocyberman]

I would like to put a request on a feature that allows creating various file templates:

Currently the project configuration file config/global.dcf file is good to load the project as a whole and any scripts therein will not have to handle library import and data preparation. But if we just one to run one script in with R --vanilla for example, this would not work because libraries and data are missing. My suggestion is to implement a function like create.file.template(name = "file_name", dir = "munge", type = c("R", "Rmd")[1], library = c("dplyr", "lubridate", "ggplot2"), data = "my_dataset1"). The function then create a file with appropriate content template based on input parameters. For example, with the aforementioned command, it would create an R file under munge directory with the beginning of the file like so:

# Project: My Test Project
# File: file_name.R
# Date Created: today()
# Author: TheAuthor
# Email: dummy@email.com
# Anything else from global.dcf

library(dplyr)
library(lubridate)
library(ggplot2)

my_dataset1 <- read.csv("../data/my_dataset1.csv")

This way the file is both consistent with project structure and self-contained.

Would this be something worth doing?

[krlmlr]

I'm not sure. I always use reload.project() as first statements in the scripts in src/ -- this doesn't make them self-contained, but you need the data files anyway. Of course, this only works with munging: FALSE and everything in cache.

[biocyberman]

I think it would be better if create.file.template is implemented. But thanks for mentioning of reload.project() at the head of every src file.

[krlmlr]

My main concern is that the information becomes out of date if you change your configuration. However, I'd review a pull request that creates a header with a comment and the statements calls

library(ProjectTemplate)
reload.project()

.