convo ![](man/figures/logo.png)
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The goal of convo
is to enable the creation of a a controlled vocabularly for naming columns in a relational dataset as described in my blog post Column Names as Contracts. This controlled vocabularly can then be used to check a set of names for adherence, to automate documentation, and to generate data checks via the pointblank
package.
Installation
You can install the development version of convo from GitHub with:
devtools::install_github("emilyriederer/convo")
Features
Available
- Define controlled vocabularly (a
convo
) in R or YAML including valid name stubs at different levels of the ontology and optional descriptions or validation checks
- Parse stub lists (candidate
convo
s) from a set of variables
- Evaluate if a set of names adheres to a
convo
and identify violations
- Compare
convo
objects and/or stub lists with set-like operations (union, intersect, setdiff) to identify new candidates for inclusion
- Generate a
pointblank
validation agent or YAML file from a convo
object for data validation
- Document a dataset with network diagrams or a table
Current Limitations / Future Enhancements
- Define overall metadata for controlled vocabularly metadata such as:
- overall descriptor string
- human-readable names describing each level
- Richer control over levels. Currently can only evaluate starting from the front, but in the future could:
- allow some levels to be optional
- work from both front and the back
- Current levels are independent of one another
- could allow for truly hierarchical ontologies where allowed level 2 stubs vary by level 1 stub used
- Current assumption is that realizations of a controlled vocabularly are all delimited by the same separator
- to work better with filepaths, might potentially want to enable multiple types of delimeters
- Current regex support slightly unreliable. Need to better document and expand
- More aesthetic documentation (
describe_*()
functions)
- Better set operations for combining instead of overwriting full
convo
specifications (not just stub lists)
- Explore integration with
dm
package to validate names across a schema
Example
Main pieces of functionality are illustrated in the Quick Start Guide on the package website.