geonode4R - R Interface to GeoNode REST API

R Interface to GeoNode REST API – Allows to perform programmatically from R

geonode4R is a new package to perform operations of the GeoNode REST API. It supports CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and search on GeoNode resources.

If you wish to sponsor geonode4R, do not hesitate to contact me

Many thanks to the following organizations that have provided fundings for developing the geonode4R package:

Table of contents

1. Overview
2. Package status
3. Credits
4. User guide
   4.1 Installation
   4.2 Connect to GeoNode REST API
   4.3 Create a resource
   4.4 Read a resource
   4.5 Delete a resource
5. Issue reporting

1. Overview and vision

Until now, equivalent tools were existing for other programming languages (e.g. Java, Python) but not in R. geonode4R intends to provide R native interface to the GeoNode REST API, in order to facilitate publication of geographic data resources from R to GeoNode.

2. Development status

A first version is being published to CRAN.

The package is at its early stage. It aims to be consolidated together with improvements made on the GeoNode API, and based on feedback of the user community.

3. Credits

Package distributed under MIT license.

If you use geonode4R, i would be very grateful if you can add a citation in your published work. By citing geonode4R, beyond acknowledging the work, you contribute to make it more visible and guarantee its growing and sustainability. You can get the preferred citation by running citation("geonode4R) in R.

You can reference geonode4R through its DOI:

4. User guide

4.1 How to install geonode4R in R

For now, the package can be installed from Github

install.packages("remotes")

Once the devtools package loaded, you can use the install_github to install geonode4R By default, package will be installed from master which is the current version in development (likely to be unstable).

remotes::install_github("eblondel/geonode4R")

4.2 Connect to GeoNode REST API

The main entry point of geosapi is the `GeoNodeManager. To configure it, enter the following line, specifying the base URL`` of your GeoNode, and your credentials:

geonode <- GeoNodeManager$new(
    url = "http://localhost:8080/geonode", #baseUrl of the Geoserver
    user = "admin", pwd = "password", #credentials
    logger = NULL #logger, for info or debugging purpose
)

By default, the geonode4R logger is deactivated. To enable the logger, specify the level of log you wish as parameter of the above R code. Two logging levels are available:

INFO: will print the geonode4R logs. Three types of messages can be distinguished: INFO, WARN, ERROR. The latter is generally associated with a stop and indicate an blocking error for the R method executed.
DEBUG will print the above geonode4R logs, and report all logs from HTTP requests performed with cURL

The GeoNodeManager inherits all methods of resource dependent managers, to provide the users with a single R interface to GeoNode REST API operations.

4.3 Create a resource

To upload a shapefile or another resource, list the resource files (e.g. a list of ESRI Shapefiles), and use the upload method of the GeoNodeManager.

files = list.files(system.file("extdata/samples", package = "geonode4R"), pattern = "shapefile1", full.names = T)
files = files[!endsWith(files, ".zip")]
created = GEONODE$upload(files)

4.4 Read a resource

To get a resource, you can get it based on a dataset identifier (‘pk’), or get it by UUID or alternate dataset. The below examples show how to perform these tasks.

#getResource
resource = GEONODE$getResource(created$dataset)

#getResourceByUUID
resource_by_uuid = GEONODE$getResourceByUUID(resource$uuid)

#getResourceByAlternate
resource_by_alternate = GEONODE$getResourceByAlternate("shapefile1")

4.5 Delete a resource

To delete a resource, use the deleteResource method of the GeoNodeManager:

deleted = GEONODE$deleteResource(created$dataset)

5. Issue reporting

Issues can be reported at https://github.com/eblondel/geonode4R/issues