Prepare 0.1.0 release

[seabbs]

We have had a fair few months with no progress on this (for understandable reasons). Shall we setup a meeting with those interested in contributing and hash out some issues that we can PR against to at least get an MVP version that can replace the functionality in epinowcast.

[pearsonca]

@seabbs could use a second set of eyes on https://github.com/epinowcast/coerceDT/blob/main/R/coerceDT.R - thoughts on the interface offered?

Not quite done w/ implement + test for it, but am thinking:

• coerceDT = select, drop arguments mirroring fread, with a minor extension of coercion
• checkDT = required, forbidden as previous
• makeDT = coerceDT => checkDT combined

[pearsonca]

@seabbs I think coerceDT + tests is basically done, moving on to checkDT.

[pearsonca]

@seabbs this is now approaching 0.1.0 release readiness.

How do we want to check that it works how we want it to work? Propose an epinowcast & scoringutils branch => introduce this as a dependency => modify those library codebases (likely also this library code to do more of what we want for them) => iterate until we're happy with what this does for those libraries.

Related: there's definitely some documentation issues to deal with - I think that's best dealt with by another set of eyes, at least to identify the WTF bits. Useful candidates for that?

[pearsonca]

Tagging @nikosbosse - I understand you've got an internal helper function like this in scoringutils. If it potentially makes sense to substitute this in, please advise (with the helper function name(s)) and I'll have a look.

[nikosbosse]

The version in scoringutils is merely this:

scoringutils:::ensure_data.table
function(data) {
  if (is.data.table(data)) {
    data <- copy(data)
  } else {
    data <- as.data.table(data)
  }
  return(data)
}

Maybe there is room for more sophistication :)

Regarding the version you linked to: It seems quite complicated to me and the function does a lot of different things (selecting / dropping columns, reading in data, conversion to data.table, selecting whether or not that happens by reference...). For me as a newbie user I think it would be helpful to separate these things a bit more.

Also since we're currently reworking scoringutils in terms of S3 methods I now see them everywhere... But having coerceDT be a generic seems like it could be a good idea.

[pearsonca]

The version in scoringutils is merely this:

scoringutils:::ensure_data.table
function(data) {
  if (is.data.table(data)) {
    data <- copy(data)
  } else {
    data <- as.data.table(data)
  }
  return(data)
}

Maybe there is room for more sophistication :)

Indeed! In terms of just replacing that function, that would literally just be: ensure_data.table(data) => coerceDT(data) (though now data could be a file path or any other string fread just handles).

If you have places internally in scoringutils where you don't need to copy, those would become coerceDT(data, copy = FALSE).

[pearsonca]

I did fiddle a bit with S3 methods - found it easier to just handle dispatch based on type in the internal function logic.

[pearsonca]

@nikosbosse had a quick peek at scoringutils - for example check_forecasts might become something like

check_forecasts <- function(data) {

  # create lists to store results ----------------------------------------------
  out <- list()
  warnings <- list()
  errors <- list()
  messages <- list()

  data <- makeDT(data, require = c("true_value", "prediction"), forbid = available_metrics())

  # ... other more complex checks, starting from the bit looking at models

[nikosbosse]

The helper function, ensure_data.table linked above is currently on the develop branch - the current version does the checks for required columns independently of that, but in principle it could also be a single function (there is currently an internal function check_columns_present())

[pearsonca]

@seabbs per discussion re nomenclature - how about asDT?