Creates a helper object that can use auto-complete to help find COVIDcast
sources and signals. The COVIDcast endpoint of
the Epidata API contains many separate data sources and signals. It can be
difficult to find the name of the signal you're looking for, so you can use
covidcast_epidata to get help with finding sources and functions without
leaving R.
The covidcast_epidata() function fetches a list of all signals, and returns
an object containing fields for every signal:
epidata <- covidcast_epidata()
epidata$signals
#> # A tibble: 451 x 3
#> source signal short_description
#> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 chng smoothed_outpatient_cli Estimated percentage of outpatie~
#> 2 chng smoothed_adj_outpatient_cli Estimated percentage of outpatie~
#> 3 chng smoothed_outpatient_covid COVID-Confirmed Doctor Visits
#> 4 chng smoothed_adj_outpatient_covid COVID-Confirmed Doctor Visits
#> 5 chng smoothed_outpatient_flu Estimated percentage of outpatie~
#> 6 chng smoothed_adj_outpatient_flu Estimated percentage of outpatie~
#> 7 covid-act-now pcr_specimen_positivity_rate Proportion of PCR specimens test~
#> 8 covid-act-now pcr_specimen_total_tests Total number of PCR specimens te~
#> 9 doctor-visits smoothed_cli Percentage of daily doctor visit~
#> 10 doctor-visits smoothed_adj_cli Percentage of daily doctor visit~
#> # i 441 more rowsIf you use an editor that supports tab completion, such as RStudio, type
epidata$signals$ and wait for the tab completion popup. You will be able
to type the name of signals and have the autocomplete feature select them
from the list for you. Note that some signal names have dashes in them, so
to access them we rely on the backtick operator:
epidata$signals$`fb-survey:smoothed_cli`
#> [1] "COVID-Like Symptoms (Unweighted 7-day average)"
#> [1] "fb-survey:smoothed_cli"
#> [1] "Estimated percentage of people with COVID-like illness "These objects can be used directly to fetch data, without requiring us to use
the pub_covidcast() function. Simply use the $call attribute of the object:
epidata$signals$`fb-survey:smoothed_cli`$call("state", "pa",
epirange(20210405, 20210410))
#> # A tibble: 6 x 15
#> geo_value signal source geo_type time_type time_value direction issue
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <fct> <fct> <date> <dbl> <date>
#> 1 pa smoothed_~ fb-su~ state day 2021-04-05 NA 2021-04-10
#> 2 pa smoothed_~ fb-su~ state day 2021-04-06 NA 2021-04-11
#> 3 pa smoothed_~ fb-su~ state day 2021-04-07 NA 2021-04-12
#> 4 pa smoothed_~ fb-su~ state day 2021-04-08 NA 2021-04-13
#> 5 pa smoothed_~ fb-su~ state day 2021-04-09 NA 2021-04-14
#> 6 pa smoothed_~ fb-su~ state day 2021-04-10 NA 2021-04-15
#> # i 7 more variables: lag <dbl>, missing_value <dbl>, missing_stderr <dbl>,
#> # missing_sample_size <dbl>, value <dbl>, stderr <dbl>, sample_size <dbl>