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Open LASA variable information

Source: R/lasa_var_info.R
lasa_var_info.Rd

Searches the package's bundled LASA topic database (see lasa_topics()) to resolve a file code or topic name, then scrapes the LASA topic overview live to find and open either the variable-information PDF LASA links for it, or its LASA topic webpage (see target). The documentation is opened from the LASA website; no PDF files are read from or bundled with the package. The live lookup is cached (in-session and on disk); refresh = TRUE rebuilds it from the live site first.

Usage

lasa_var_info(
  filecode,
  open = interactive(),
  target = c("pdf", "varinfo", "web", "webpage"),
  fuzzy_match = TRUE,
  max_edit_distance = 2L,
  refresh = FALSE
)

Arguments

filecode

A single LASA file code, data-file name, or topic name, such as "046", "LASA046", "LASA 046", "lasa_046", or "Physical activity".

open

Logical. Should the document be opened? The default is TRUE in an interactive R session and FALSE otherwise. If FALSE, the URL is returned without being opened. When opened, it is always opened in the system's default web browser – the RStudio Viewer does not render hosted PDFs/HTML reliably, so it is not used here.

target

Which document to resolve and open: "pdf"/"varinfo" (the default) for the variable-information PDF, or "web"/"webpage" for the topic's LASA webpage. Matched case-insensitively; also accepts "doc"/"documentation" as further aliases for the PDF and "website"/"browser"/"online" for the webpage. See Details for the pdf-not-found detour to the webpage.

fuzzy_match

Logical. If TRUE, allow small typographical errors in topic names.

max_edit_distance

Maximum edit distance allowed for fuzzy topic-name matching.

refresh

Logical. If TRUE, refresh the cached varinfo/webpage-link lookup before searching it.

Value

Invisibly returns the HTTPS URL of the matched document (the variable-information PDF, or the LASA topic webpage).

Details

filecode may be a LASA file code, a LASA data-file name, or a topic name. File-code matching ignores case, spaces, underscores, hyphens, an optional "LASA" prefix, and common file suffixes. Topic matching is case-insensitive and accepts incomplete names. Small typographical errors are accepted when fuzzy_match = TRUE.

target selects which LASA document to resolve and open, matched case-insensitively: "pdf"/"varinfo" (also "doc"/"documentation") for the variable-information PDF (the default), or "web"/"webpage" (also "website"/"browser"/"online") for the matched topic's LASA webpage (e.g. https://lasa-vu.nl/topics/physical-activity/). Not every file code has a linked PDF (has_varinfo = FALSE in lasa_topics()'s output); when target resolves to the PDF but none is linked, this automatically detours to the topic's webpage instead, printing a message explaining why. There is no detour in the other direction: if target is the webpage and none can be resolved, that is an error.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
lasa_var_info("046")
lasa_var_info("LASA046")
lasa_var_info("LASA 046")
lasa_var_info("lasa_046")
lasa_var_info("Physical activity")
lasa_var_info("physical act")

# Open the topic's LASA webpage instead of the PDF
lasa_var_info("046", target = "web")

# Retrieve the URL without opening the document
url <- lasa_var_info("046", open = FALSE)
} # }