A new release of Rblpapi is now on CRAN. It provides a direct interface between R and the Bloomberg Terminal via the C++ API provided by Bloomberg Labs (but note that a valid Bloomberg license and installation is required).

This marks the fourth release since the package first appeared on CRAN last year. Thanks to multiple contributors, it packs a number of changes (including two new functions bsrch() and fieldInfo()), numerous internal as well as build improvements, additional documentation and last but not least use of unit testing (provided a Bloomberg connection is available, ie not at CRAN or on Travis CI). See the NEWS.Rd extract for more details:

Changes in Rblpapi version 0.3.3 (2016-03-14)

• configure adds a missing method="libcurl" options (PR #109 by Martin Bel).

• New function bsrch() adds basic search functionality (PR #111 by Morgan Williams fixing ticket #82).

• The licensing status of the Rblpapi source package was clarified (PR #119).

• The bds() help page now shows an example using an overrides argument (PR #121).

• A new function fieldInfo was added, and field information is used in bdh and bdp (PRs #122, #123, #125, and #127).

• The bdp function now checks the order (PR #126).

• Unit testing was added (PRs #129 and #131).

• Data retrieval is now smarter about the types returned from Bloomberg (PR #132 and #133; and #141 and #142).

• The bdh and bds functions now support an option verbose (PRs #138).

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the this release. As always, more detailed information is on the Rblpapi page. Questions, comments etc should go to the issue tickets system at the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.