Document a Universe of Packages • dverse

The goal of dverse is to document a universe. It creates a data frame containing the metadata associated with the documentation of a collection of R packages. It allows for linking topic names to their corresponding documentation online.

If you have a meta-package, dverse helps you to create a comprehensive reference for its website.

Installation

Install from CRAN:

install.packages("dverse")

or get a development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("maurolepore/dverse")

Motivation

The Tidyverse popularized the idea of a “universe of packages.” The typical universe has a meta-package that centralizes access to functions and data across all its packages. For example, with library(tidyverse) the tidyverse meta-package centralizes access to the functions in dplyr, ggplot2, and several other packages in the Tidyverse universe.

However, meta-packages typically don’t centralize documentation. For example, the tidyverse website only shows the documentation for the tidyverse meta-package itself but does not show the documentation for dplyr, ggplot2, and other packages in the Tidyverse.

The dverse package solves this problem. It creates a data frame containing the metadata associated with the documentation of any set of packages. This data frame can be easily used to generate the universe-wide reference for the meta-package website, for example using pkgdown.

Example

document_universe() creates a data frame with documentation metadata of one or more packages.
url_template can take different templates for the manual and vignettes.
knitr::kable() turns the URLs into clickable links. DT::datatabe() also provides a search box.

library(dverse)

library(glue)
library(tibble)

universe <- c("glue", "tibble")
document_universe(universe)
#> # A tibble: 46 × 7
#>    topic      alias                          title concept type  keyword package
#>    <chr>      <chr>                          <chr> <chr>   <chr> <chr>   <chr>  
#>  1 add_column add_column                     Add … additi… help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  2 add_row    add_row, add_case              Add … additi… help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  3 as_glue    as_glue                        Coer… <NA>    help  <NA>    glue   
#>  4 as_tibble  as_tibble, as_tibble_row, as_… Coer… <NA>    help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  5 char       char, set_char_opts            Form… vector… help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  6 deprecated deprecated, data_frame, tibbl… Depr… <NA>    help  intern… tibble 
#>  7 digits     digits                         Comp… <NA>    vign… <NA>    tibble 
#>  8 enframe    enframe, deframe               Conv… <NA>    help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  9 engines    engines                        Cust… <NA>    vign… <NA>    glue   
#> 10 extending  extending                      Exte… <NA>    vign… <NA>    tibble 
#> # ℹ 36 more rows

# Assuming vignettes can be found at */articles/* rather than */reference/*
manual <- "https://{package}.tidyverse.org/reference/{topic}.html"
document_universe(universe, url_template = manual)
#> # A tibble: 46 × 7
#>    topic                               alias title concept type  keyword package
#>    <chr>                               <chr> <chr> <chr>   <chr> <chr>   <chr>  
#>  1 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… add_… Add … additi… help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  2 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… add_… Add … additi… help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  3 <a href=https://glue.tidyverse.org… as_g… Coer… <NA>    help  <NA>    glue   
#>  4 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… as_t… Coer… <NA>    help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  5 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… char… Form… vector… help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  6 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… depr… Depr… <NA>    help  intern… tibble 
#>  7 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… digi… Comp… <NA>    vign… <NA>    tibble 
#>  8 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… enfr… Conv… <NA>    help  <NA>    tibble 
#>  9 <a href=https://glue.tidyverse.org… engi… Cust… <NA>    vign… <NA>    glue   
#> 10 <a href=https://tibble.tidyverse.o… exte… Exte… <NA>    vign… <NA>    tibble 
#> # ℹ 36 more rows

# Adding an explicit template for vignettes
vignettes <- "https://{package}.tidyverse.org/articles/{topic}.html"
docs <- document_universe(universe, url_template = c(manual, vignettes))

knitr::kable(tail(docs))

topic	alias	title	concept	type	keyword	package
tribble	tribble	Row-wise tibble creation	NA	help	NA	tibble
trim	trim	Trim a character vector	NA	help	NA	glue
trunc_mat	trunc_mat	Legacy printing	NA	help	internal	tibble
types	types	Column types	NA	vignette	NA	tibble
view	view	View an object	NA	help	NA	tibble
wrappers	wrappers	How to write a function that wraps glue	NA	vignette	NA	glue