ping.md

taxize gained the new functions *ping() (e.g., itis_ping()) to allow you to ping each data provider that has a web API. That is, excluding those where we simply scrape data (e.g. IUCN), or download tabular data (The Plant List).

See the new functions:

• col_ping()
• itis_ping()
• eol_ping()
• ncbi_ping()
• tropicos_ping()
• nbn_ping()
• gbif_ping()
• ubio_ping()
• bold_ping()
• ipni_ping()
• vascan_ping()

With these functions, by default we simply check if the HTTP status code is 200 (meaning, OK, it's up), return TRUE if it is, and FALSE if not. Instead you can match a certain HTTP status code (e.g, 400), or match content. Matching content is a small API call, then we make sure the content returned is as expected, so if this test returns FALSE, the service may be up, but the content returned is wrong (or has changed).

Installation

Install latest dev version of taxize

devtools::install_github("ropensci/taxize")

library("taxize")

Examples

Is a service up or not?

col_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

itis_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

eol_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

ncbi_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

tropicos_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

nbn_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

gbif_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

ubio_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

bold_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

ipni_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

vascan_ping()
#> [1] TRUE

Does the HTTP code returned match 200? It should

nbn_ping(200)
#> [1] TRUE

It should not match 503, should return FALSE

nbn_ping(503)
#> [1] FALSE

We can ask if the output matches what's expected

nbn_ping("content")
#> [1] TRUE

vascan_ping("content")
#> [1] TRUE