sbtools – getting started

sbtools provides access and upload utilities for ScienceBase

Much of sbtools does not require authentication.

## Examples

library(sbtools)

# Query ScienceBase for data about Antarctica
query_sb_text('Antarctica', limit=1)

# Query for a specific DOI
query_sb_doi('10.5066/P92U7ZUT')

# Inspect the contents of the above item
children <- item_list_children('5669a79ee4b08895842a1d47')

sapply(children, function(child) child$title)

item_get(children[[1]])

sbtools uses an sbitem S3 object that is a list containing the sbjson associated with the item in question.


item <- item_get(children[[1]])

class(item)

class(unclass(item))

Much of sbtools is intended to be used after authentication. This part of sbtools is changing in Winter, 2023-2024 as ScienceBase transitions for password-based authentication to two factor and token based authentication. This next section was rendered with the author’s () private credentials.

The old way used authenticate_sb() with a username and password. The password could be cached using the keyring package.

NOTE: This method no longer works and is shown here for reference with regard to old code and workflows.

authenticate_sb(Sys.getenv("sb_user"))

my_home_item <- user_id()

new_item <- item_create(title = 'new test item', parent_id = my_home_item)

test.txt <- file.path(tempdir(), 'test.txt')

writeLines(c('this is','my data file'), test.txt)

item_append_files(new_item, test.txt)

item_list_files(new_item)$fname

item_rm(new_item)

unlink(test.txt)

# restart or clean session to reauthenticate differently
sbtools:::clean_session()

The new way uses initialize_sciencebase_session() to open a browser window. Once logged in, you can get a token from the user drop down in the upper right. For this example, that token has been saved as an environment variable.

If the token has been entered previously and is still valid, it will not be requested again.

user <- Sys.getenv("sb_user") # this should be your science base user id

initialize_sciencebase_session(user)

my_home_item <- user_id()

new_item <- item_create(title = 'new test item', parent_id = my_home_item)

test.txt <- file.path(tempdir(), 'test.txt')

writeLines(c('this is','my data file'), test.txt)

item_append_files(new_item, test.txt)

item_list_files(new_item)$fname

item_rm(new_item)

unlink(test.txt)