Introduction to Rparadox

Introduction

The Rparadox package provides tools to read data from Paradox database files (.db) directly into R. This vignette will walk you through the basic usage of the package.

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("celebithil/Rparadox")

Basic Usage

The main workflow involves opening a file, reading the data, and then closing the file.

library(Rparadox)

# Get the path to an example database included with the package
db_path <- system.file("extdata", "biolife.db", package = "Rparadox")

# Open the file handle
pxdoc <- pxlib_open_file(db_path)

# Read data and close the handle
if (!is.null(pxdoc)) {
  biolife_data <- pxlib_get_data(pxdoc)
  pxlib_close_file(pxdoc)
}

# Display the first few rows of the resulting tibble
head(biolife_data)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 8
#>   `Species No` Category Common_Name `Species Name` `Length (cm)` Length_In Notes
#>          <dbl> <chr>    <chr>       <chr>                  <dbl>     <dbl> <chr>
#> 1        90020 Trigger… Clown Trig… Ballistoides …            50      19.7 "Als…
#> 2        90030 Snapper  Red Emperor Lutjanus sebae            60      23.6 "Cal…
#> 3        90050 Wrasse   Giant Maor… Cheilinus und…           229      90.2 "Thi…
#> 4        90070 Angelfi… Blue Angel… Pomacanthus n…            30      11.8 "Hab…
#> 5        90080 Cod      Lunartail … Variola louti             80      31.5 "Als…
#> 6        90090 Scorpio… Firefish    Pterois volit…            38      15.0 "Als…
#> # ℹ 1 more variable: Graphic <blob>

Handling Character Encodings

For legacy files with incorrect encoding information in the header, you can specify the correct encoding manually.

# Example for a file known to be in the CP866 encoding
pxdoc <- pxlib_open_file("path/to/your/file.db", encoding = "cp866")

This ensures that text is correctly converted to UTF-8.