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This function searches for CRAN packages by author names. Note that some authors may use different name variations on CRAN (e.g., "Di Cook" and "Dianne Cook"), so it may be necessary to call the function with several variations.

Usage

fetch_cran(
  author_names = NULL,
  package_names = NULL,
  downloads_from = "2000-01-01",
  downloads_to = Sys.Date()
)

Arguments

author_names

A character vector containing the authors' names in the form used on CRAN.

package_names

A character vector of package names. Ignored if `author_names` is provided.

downloads_from

A date or character string in the format "YYYY-MM-DD" specifying the date from which to start counting downloads. Default is "2000-01-01".

downloads_to

A date or character string in the format "YYYY-MM-DD" specifying the last date for counting downloads. Default is current date.

Value

A data frame returning meta data about a package including total downloads between `downloads_from` and `downloads_to`.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
cran2024 <- fetch_cran(
   author_names = c("Michael Lydeamore", "Di Cook", "Dianne Cook", "Hyndman"),
   downloads_from = "2024-01-01",
   downloads_to = "2024-12-31"
)
} # }