cdcfluview – On The Way to “CRAN 7K”

I like to turn coincidence into convergence whenever possible. This weekend, a user of cdcfluview had a question that caused me to notice a difference in behaviour between the package was interacting with CDC FluView API, so I updated the package to accommodate the change and the user.

Around the same time, @recology_ tweeted:

we're at 6983 #rstats pkgs https://t.co/4i6dWF103I – quick, someone submit 17 more so we can hit 7K

— Scott Chamberlain (@recology_) August 9, 2015

Finally, the 2015-2016 flu season is also fast approaching (so a three-fer!), making a CRAN leap for cdcfluview quite timely.

Since I can’t let @quonimous have all the #rstats fun & glory, I added a function and two data sets to cdcfluview, did the CRAN dance and it’s now on CRAN. I also did the github dance to have it’s entry in the Web Technologies Task View updated.

The new function lets you grab the XML behind the high-level Weekly US Map: Influenza Summary Update (I’ll be adding a function to make a similar plot that won’t require gosh-awful Flash) and the data sets provide metadata about the composition of HHS regions and Census regions, making it easier to compose factors, add labels to maps or even segment maps/combine polygons. The existing two grab current & historical detailed national & state influenza data.

There’s an example on github and in the archives here.

If you have any other data you need freed from the confines of the CDC FluView Flash portal, please file an issue & paste a screen shot (if you are comfortable with most browser Developer Tools views, even a dump of the request or “as cURL” URL would be awesome).