Load Excel Data with Metadata (Codes and Labels)

Downloads an Excel file from a remote server and imports it as a data frame. Optionally processes a documentation sheet to assign variable labels and convert variables into factors with labeled levels.

Usage

openDataObject(name, url = NULL, doc = NULL, ...)

Arguments

name: character string. File name including extension (e.g. "data.xlsx").
url: character string. Base URL where the file is located. Defaults to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AndriSignorell/Teaching/main/data/. (see https://github.com/AndriSignorell/Teaching/)
doc: list or NA. Defines the structure of the documentation sheet. If NULL, the function tries to detect a sheet named "Description". If NA, no metadata processing is performed.
...: additional arguments passed to readxl::read_excel().

Value

a data.frame containing the imported data. If metadata is available:

variables may be converted to factors (nominal/ordinal).
factor levels are labeled using provided codes.
variable labels are assigned using label().

Details

The function downloads the Excel file to a temporary location and reads the first sheet as the main dataset.

If a documentation sheet is available, it is expected to contain columns such as:

Variable name
Description (label)
Codes (e.g. "1=Male | 2=Female")
Scale ("nominal", "ordinal", etc.)

Variables with scale "nominal" or "ordinal" are converted to factors. Data values without a matching entry in the codes column become NA.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Load dataset with automatic metadata detection
openDataObject("beauty.xlsx")

# Load dataset without metadata processing
openDataObject("beauty.xlsx", doc = NA)
} # }