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Import a REDCap database into a tidy supertibble

Source: R/read_redcap.R
read_redcap.Rd

Query the REDCap API to retrieve data and metadata about a project, and transform the output into a "supertibble" that contains data and metadata organized into tibbles, broken down by instrument.

Usage

read_redcap(
  redcap_uri,
  token,
  raw_or_label = "label",
  forms = NULL,
  export_survey_fields = NULL,
  export_data_access_groups = NULL,
  suppress_redcapr_messages = TRUE,
  guess_max = Inf,
  allow_mixed_structure = getOption("redcaptidier.allow.mixed.structure", FALSE)
)

Arguments

redcap_uri

The URI/URL of the REDCap server (e.g., "https://server.org/apps/redcap/api/"). Required.

token

The user-specific string that serves as the password for a project. Required.

raw_or_label

A string (either 'raw', 'label', or 'haven') that specifies whether to export the raw coded values or the labels for the options of categorical fields. Default is 'label'. If 'haven' is supplied, categorical fields are converted to haven_labelled vectors.

forms

A character vector of REDCap instrument names that specifies which instruments to import. Default is NULL which imports all instruments in the project.

export_survey_fields

A logical that specifies whether to export survey identifier and timestamp fields. The default, NULL, tries to determine if survey fields exist and returns them if available.

export_data_access_groups

A logical that specifies whether to export the data access group field. The default, NULL, tries to determine if a data access group field exists and returns it if available.

suppress_redcapr_messages

A logical to control whether to suppress messages from REDCapR API calls. Default TRUE.

guess_max

A positive base::numeric value passed to readr::read_csv() that specifies the maximum number of records to use for guessing column types. Default Inf.

allow_mixed_structure

A logical to allow for support of mixed repeating/non-repeating instruments. Setting to TRUE will treat the mixed instrument's non-repeating versions as repeating instruments with a single instance. Applies to longitudinal projects only. Default FALSE. Can be set globally with options(redcaptidier.allow.mixed.structure = TRUE).

Value

A tibble in which each row represents a REDCap instrument. It contains the following columns:

  • redcap_form_name, the name of the instrument

  • redcap_form_label, the label for the instrument

  • redcap_data, a tibble with the data for the instrument

  • redcap_metadata, a tibble of data dictionary entries for each field in the instrument

  • redcap_events, a tibble with information about the arms and longitudinal events represented in the instrument. Only if the project has longitudinal events enabled

  • structure, the instrument structure, either "repeating" or "nonrepeating"

  • data_rows, the number of rows in the instrument's data tibble

  • data_cols, the number of columns in the instrument's data tibble

  • data_size, the size in memory of the instrument's data tibble computed by lobstr::obj_size()

  • data_na_pct, the percentage of cells in the instrument's data columns that are NA excluding identifier and form completion columns

Details

This function uses the REDCapR package to query the REDCap API. The REDCap API returns a block matrix that mashes data from all data collection instruments together. The read_redcap() function deconstructs the block matrix and splices the data into individual tibbles, where one tibble represents the data from one instrument.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
redcap_uri <- Sys.getenv("REDCAP_URI")
token <- Sys.getenv("REDCAP_TOKEN")

read_redcap(
  redcap_uri,
  token,
  raw_or_label = "label"
)
} # }