stefanjuenger / sdcr

Some convenience functions for the GESIS Secure Data Center in combination with R

For any questions regarding your visit to the GESIS Secure Data Center (SDC), please contact us personally and always pay attention to the guidelines for your visit

People who work with R also want access to sensitive data which are provided in the GESIS Secure Data Center. Yet, R often does not have the same feature set as other software packages, such as Stata. This R-package aims to imitate some of these functions:

• Creating a log file from an R script
• Extracting an R script from a log file
• ...

The package can be installed with the R command:

devtools::install_github("stefmue/sdcR")

Creating a log file file from an R script

Currently, you can create a logfile from an R script by placing a footer to your script (see below) and running the command produce_log_file() as follows:

# STOP ADDING CODE BELOW -------------------------------------------------------

# DO NOT CHANGE OR EDIT THE FOLLOWING LINES. MUST REMAIN AT THE END OF THIS FILE
sdcR::produce_log_file(source_file = current_file(),
                       log_file = paste0(current_file(), ".log"))

Alternatively, you can simply use the command produce_log_file() to create a log file from an external session. For example:

sdcR::produce_log_file(source_file = "/path/to/your/fancy_R_script.R",
                       log_file = "/path/to/your/fancy_R_script.R.log")

What we will ask you to do in the SDC, however, is to use this first appraoch as it is more error-prone and holds everything in one place.

Creating a log file file from an R script

After a logfile was produced (and checked by us for sensitivity) you may want to extract the R code from the it. This can be done using again two approaches. The footer approach would be:

# STOP ADDING CODE BELOW -------------------------------------------------------

# DO NOT CHANGE OR EDIT THE FOLLOWING LINES. MUST REMAIN AT THE END OF THIS FILE
sdcR::produce_log_file(source_file = current_file(),
                       log_file = paste0(current_file(), ".log"))
                       
sdcR::code_from_log(paste0(current_file(), ".log"), "./test/OUTPUTCODE.R")

And the external approach:

sdcR::produce_log_file(source_file = "/path/to/your/fancy_R_script.R",
                       log_file = "/path/to/your/fancy_R_script.R.log")
                       
                       
sdcR::code_from_log("/path/to/your/fancy_R_script.R.log", 
                    "/path/to/your/fancy_R_script.R.log.R")                       

As you might already imagine, what we will ask you to do in the SDC is again to use the first approach.

tl;dr

1. Store the logfile we have sent to you in a folder of your choice
2. Make sure its the only logfile in this folder
3. Open RStudio
4. setwd() to the folder of your file
5. Copy & paste and then run the following command:

if (!require(devtools)) {
  install.packages("devtools")
} else {
  library(devtools)
}


if (!require(sdcR)) {
  install_github("sdcR")
} else {
  library(sdcR)
}


sdcR::code_from_log(
  list.files(pattern = ".log"),
  paste0(list.files(pattern = ".log"), ".R")
)
}