Submission Group 14: Rpollution

[mel-liow]

Submitting Authors:

• Christopher Alexander (@christopheralex)
• Daniel King (@dankfe)
• Mel Liow (@mel-liow)

Package Name: Rpyllution - https://github.com/UBC-MDS/rpollution One-Line Description of Package: An R package for visualizing or obtaining future, historic and current air pollution data from the OpenWeatherMap API. Repository Link: rpollution Version submitted: 2.0.0 Editor:

Reviewers:

• Siqi Tao ()
• Qingqing Song ()
• Joyce Wang ()

Package: rpollution
Title: Visualizing or obtaining future, historic and current air pollution data
Version: 2.0.0
Authors@R: 
    person(given = "Christopher",
           family = "Alexander",
           role = c("aut", "cre"),
           email = "@gmail.com",
    person(given = "Daniel",
           family = "King",
           role = c("aut", "cre"),
           email = "@gmail.com",    
    person(given = "Mel",
           family = "Liow",
           role = c("aut", "cre"),
           email = "mel.liow.94@gmail.com",
))
Description: A package to retrieve and visualise air pollution data from the OpenWeatherMap API.
License: MIT + file LICENSE
Encoding: UTF-8
LazyData: true
Roxygen: list(markdown = TRUE)
RoxygenNote: 7.1.2
Imports:

Suggests: 
    testthat (>= 2.1.0),

Scope

• Please indicate which category or categories from our package fit policies this package falls under: (Please check an appropriate box below. If you are unsure, we suggest you make a pre-submission inquiry.):

  • [X] data retrieval
  • [ ] data extraction
  • [ ] data munging
  • [ ] data deposition
  • [ ] workflow automation
  • [ ] version control
  • [ ] citation management and bibliometrics
  • [ ] scientific software wrappers
  • [ ] field and lab reproducibility tools
  • [ ] database software bindings
  • [ ] geospatial data
  • [ ] text analysis

• Explain how and why the package falls under these categories (briefly, 1-2 sentences):

Our package contains wrappers for accessing the OpenWeatherMap Air pollution API, a free data source for weather data.

• Who is the target audience and what are scientific applications of this package?

The target audience are for people who are interested in visualising local air pollution for e.g. forecasting or building an air pollution application. Additionally, this package can be useful for researchers or scientists who would like to analyse data in a more suitable format.

• Are there other R packages that accomplish the same thing? If so, how does yours differ or meet our criteria for best-in-category?

  Although there is an abundance of weather packages and APIs in the R ecosystem, this particular package looks at specifically air pollution data and uses the Air Pollution API from OpenWeather. This is a unique package which provides simple and easy to use functions and allows users to quickly access and visualise data.

• (If applicable) Does your package comply with our guidance around Ethics, Data Privacy and Human Subjects Research?

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• Explain reasons for any pkgcheck items which your package is unable to pass.

Technical checks

Confirm each of the following by checking the box.

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This package:

• [X] does not violate the Terms of Service of any service it interacts with.
• [ ] has a CRAN and OSI accepted license.
• [X] contains a README with instructions for installing the development version.
• [X] includes documentation with examples for all functions, created with roxygen2.
• [x] contains a vignette with examples of its essential functions and uses.
• [X] has a test suite.
• [x] has continuous integration, including reporting of test coverage using services such as Travis CI, Coveralls and/or CodeCov.

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- [ ] The package is novel and will be of interest to the broad readership of the journal. - [ ] The manuscript describing the package is no longer than 3000 words. - [ ] You intend to archive the code for the package in a long-term repository which meets the requirements of the journal (see [MEE's Policy on Publishing Code](http://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2041-210X/journal-resources/policy-on-publishing-code.html)) - (*Scope: Do consider MEE's [Aims and Scope](http://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2041-210X/aims-and-scope/read-full-aims-and-scope.html) for your manuscript. We make no guarantee that your manuscript will be within MEE scope.*) - (*Although not required, we strongly recommend having a full manuscript prepared when you submit here.*) - (*Please do not submit your package separately to Methods in Ecology and Evolution*)

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[jo4356]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
• [x] As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (if you are unsure whether you are in conflict, please speak to your editor before starting your review).

Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• [x] A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• [x] Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• [x] Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• [x] Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• [x] Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• [x] Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• [x] Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• [x] Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• [x] Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• [x] Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• [x] Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing:

• [x] Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

Great work again on this project!

• The functions worked as intended and all tests passed.
• The plots look beautiful.
• The repo is very organized. I especially like that you split all the functions and tests for each function into different files.
• I also like that the tests here are split into different test blocks for what functionality the tests are testing. It makes them much easier to read and organized.
• The vignette for how to get started is very helpful. I like that you mentioned to save the API key as a string so there is no room for confusion.

Just one suggestion:

• Like I mentioned in the Python project, there are tests for whether or not the inputs are correct in every function. These can probably be extracted out into helper functions to reduce repetition in the code.

[scarlqq]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
• [ ] As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (if you are unsure whether you are in conflict, please speak to your editor before starting your review).

Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• [x] A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• [x] Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• [x] Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• [x] Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• [x] Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• [x] Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• [x] Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• [x] Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• [x] Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• [x] Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• [/] Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing:

• [x] Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

The first thing is still congrats on creating such a useful and meaningful package. This R package is well organized and meets every feature in its documentation mentioned.

• After reviewing two packages, what impressed me most is the name of the packages. R and py are smoothly and cleverly incorporated into the name, which is quite eye-catching!
• About documentation: The vignette is clear, however, from my consideration, including README.md would be better.
• About scripts:
  • What I found in the python package, all the functions existing in the same script, did not happen here.
  • However, the comments in the scripts are still needed to make the function more readable.
• About visualization
  • Same legend tag of PM2_5 happens here in R package as the python package in get_pollution_forecast() function.

[SiqiTao]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

• Briefly describe any working relationship you have (had) with the package authors.
• [x] As the reviewer I confirm that there are no conflicts of interest for me to review this work (if you are unsure whether you are in conflict, please speak to your editor before starting your review).

Documentation

The package includes all the following forms of documentation:

• [x] A statement of need: clearly stating problems the software is designed to solve and its target audience in README
• [x] Installation instructions: for the development version of package and any non-standard dependencies in README
• [x] Vignette(s): demonstrating major functionality that runs successfully locally
• [x] Function Documentation: for all exported functions
• [x] Examples: (that run successfully locally) for all exported functions
• [x] Community guidelines: including contribution guidelines in the README or CONTRIBUTING, and DESCRIPTION with URL, BugReports and Maintainer (which may be autogenerated via Authors@R).

Functionality

• [x] Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
• [x] Functionality: Any functional claims of the software been confirmed.
• [x] Performance: Any performance claims of the software been confirmed.
• [x] Automated tests: Unit tests cover essential functions of the package and a reasonable range of inputs and conditions. All tests pass on the local machine.
• [x] Packaging guidelines: The package conforms to the rOpenSci packaging guidelines.

Estimated hours spent reviewing:

• [x] Should the author(s) deem it appropriate, I agree to be acknowledged as a package reviewer ("rev" role) in the package DESCRIPTION file.

---

Review Comments

Very interesting and useful package! The package looks neat and instructions are pretty straightforward.

• Plot generated by get_air_pollution() function looks beautiful and easy to read.
• Plot generated by get_pollution_forecast() is well labeled.
• All tests passed!
• Vignette is well organized and easy to follow.
• It would be better if more comments are included in the scripts
• I noticed that test functions are used to check if the input longitude/latitude values are valid. I think it may be helpful if input date values (for example, the format of date, start date not later than ending date, etc.) are checked as well.
• More detailed instructions can be provided in terms of getting API keys (it took me a while to figure out).