R Observatory: Metrics for dfeR version 2.0.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

dfeR

2.0.0Package record

Common Department for Education Analysis Tasks

0packages depend

3.4Kdownloads / year

73.4%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Cam RaceCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

Provides preferred methods for common analytical tasks undertaken across the Department for Education in England, including number formatting, project templates and curated reference data.

Changes in 2.0.0

**Breaking change**: Removed the deprecated wd_pcon_lad_la_rgn_ctry dataset and its startup message. Use geo_hierarchy instead, which has all the same columns plus more, and is kept up to date (it includes 2025, wd_pcon_lad_la_rgn_ctry stopped at 2024).
Added diagnostic_test() and a set of check_* helpers to diagnose and (optionally) fix common DfE laptop R-setup issues — proxy settings, Git SSL verification, GITHUB_PAT, renv download methods, RTools toolchain, global .gitconfig location, and .Renviron/.Rprofile location.
Added fetch_mp_lookup() to fetch the Westminster constituency to sitting MP lookup maintained at https://github.com/dfe-analytical-services/mp-lookup, giving one row per constituency with the MP's name, party, member ID and email alongside the geography the constituency maps to. It errors with an informative message if the upstream file is missing any expected columns.
air_install() now checks the installed Air version and automatically reinstalls it if it is older than the minimum version required by air_style() (currently 0.10.0, when Air's default assignment-style changed to "arrow"). It also gains a force argument to always reinstall. If the install does not leave a supported version of Air in place, it now warns rather than failing silently.

Show all changes in 2.0.0Hide the rest of the changes in 2.0.0

format_ay(), format_fy(), format_ay_reverse() and format_fy_reverse() now accept vectors of years, e.g. format_ay(c(201617, 201718)). Previously they failed given more than one value.
Fixed get_ons_api_data() ignoring any where filter in query_params; filtered queries could return extra rows. It also now gives informative errors when a query matches nothing, the API can't be reached, or the API rejects the request (for example an unknown data_id).
Fixed air_style() failing when the target path contains spaces (for example a OneDrive path under "OneDrive - Department for Education").
Fixed check_databricks_odbc() failing for users who don't have stringr installed.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("dfeR", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("dfe-analytical-services/dfeR")

Development version from dfe-analytical-services/dfeR. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-dfer

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-dfeR

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-dfeR

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 4.5 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-10-17
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-10-01
OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-20

Show 6 earlier changesHide 6 earlier changes

ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-17
OK13 OK2026-06-09
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-06-08
OK13 OK2026-05-20
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-05-10
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 2.0.0

READMEYes · 473 wordsVignettesYes · 4 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 2.0.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 49 (5 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 89%34 run in a plain check (2 of them under a condition) · 4 never run
Exported functions with examples: 100%
Documented parameters: 98%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (4)

Connecting to SQL HTML
Creating a new dfeR project HTML
Diagnosing your R setup HTML
Scalable Bulk Writing to Databricks: write_df_to_delta HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

3.4K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #6,550 · ~9/day · ~279/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

66630 days

1.3K90 days

3.4K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on81 r2u8 autocran

How downloads are counted

Repository

dfe-analytical-services/dfer ↗Organization: dfe-analytical-services

14Stars

5Forks

10Open issues

0Open PRs

16Releases

137Commits

14Commit identities

r

License file reads as GPL-3.0 · 137 commits · Last activity 2026-09-25 · 0% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 91%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 72
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 10

Stars over time

2025-01-30 · 122026-07-07 · 14

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

15 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 7 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/dfe-analytical-services/dfer on 2026-10-25.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Governance and community (3)

Code of conductContributing guidePR template

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-09-25 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-09-25

Coverage (1)

Coverage reporting (Codecov)

Show all practicesHide 3 practices

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

data-raw/

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdCRAN-SUBMISSION

Lint, format, editor (2)

Lint workflowRStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (2026-10-20)

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

Claude Codefirst seen on or before 2026-09-04
Named in .Rbuildignore: .claude
Named in .gitignore: .claude
Commits: at least 1 crediting it in the message

Models named in its commits

Claude Fable 51 commit · Sep 2026

Counts are commits, not lines of code. Commits by a tool's accounts count once across all of its accounts. Commits crediting it are the largest count among its credit lines, a minimum.How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

23 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing dfeR adds 55 packages (27 with compiled code, 35 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, arrow 4.2 MB, pak 3.8 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 4.1.0

Imports (16)

arrow cli DBI dplyr emoji httr2 jsonlite lifecycle renv rlang rstudio.prefs stringr tidyselect usethisutilswithr

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (8)

knitr rmarkdown spelling testthat mockery ggplot2 purrr scales

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Nothing depends on this yet.

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (11)

Cam Race

Author, Maintainer since 1.0.0 (2025)

Author

Author

Contributor

Contributor · added in 2.0.0

Jen Machin

Contributor

Paula Rocha

Contributor · added in 2.0.0

Lauren Snaathorst

Contributor · added in 1.0.1

Jake Tufts

Contributor

Menna Zayed

Contributor

Department for Education, England

Copyright holder · added in 1.0.1

Listed in earlier versions (1)

Department for Education, UK

no longer listed · 1.0.0

Releases (3)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

2.0.0Latest
record
2026-09-23 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 17 exports
air_install, air_style, check_databricks_odbc, check_git_sslverify, check_gitconfig_location, check_github_pat, check_proxy_settings, check_renv_dl_file_method, check_renv_download_method, check_renv_rprof_location, check_rtools, diagnostic_test, fetch_lsips, fetch_mayoral, fetch_mp_lookup, pretty_time, write_df_to_delta
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
1.0.1
record
2025-01-15 · diff ↗
1.0.0
record
2025-01-13
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24

Package metadata

First published: 2025-01-13
Total releases: 3 / 1 yrs
License: GPL (>= 3) OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.1.0
Bundled data: 346 KB / 6 files
Download size: 1.0 MB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("dfeR")

Format

Race, C., Department for Education, England, Bielby, R., Garbett, L., Machin, J., Robinson, A., Rocha, P., Selby, L., Snaathorst, L., Tufts, J., & Zayed, M. (2026). dfeR: Common Department for Education Analysis Tasks (Version 2.0.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.dfeR

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for dfeR version 2.0.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-26. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-26, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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