Configurations • movenet

Livestock movement and holding data can come in a diversity of shapes and formats. To ensure correct reading of data regardless of the format, movenet requires its users to provide configurations, indicating how the package should read any incoming movement and holding data files.

This vignette describes how to manage movenet configurations.

library(movenet)

Configuration files

Configuration (config) files tell movenet how to read incoming data files.

There are two types of config files, each with slightly different requirements:

movement config files, with information on how to read movement data files. Configuration groupings in these files are prefixed with movedata_.
holding config files, with information on how to read holding data files. Configuration groupings in these files are prefixed with holdingdata_.

Movement and holding configurations can also be combined into a single config file, containing both movedata_ and holdingdata_ configuration groupings. These combined config files need to fulfill criteria for both movement and holding config files.

While differing in the details, movement and holding config files share a common structure, built around two groups of configurations:

file and data options that commonly vary between datasets (fileopts)
column headers/indices for data fields that are either required or that you want to extract along for analyses (cols)

These groupings are visualised in the content of the example movement config file ScotEID.yml, and discussed in more detail in the subsections below.

xfun::file_string(system.file("configurations", "ScotEID.yml", package="movenet"))
#> movedata_fileopts:
#>   separator: ","   #Separator (delimiter) character used in movement datafile
#>   encoding: "UTF-8"    #Encoding used in movement datafile
#>   decimal: "."  #Decimal mark used in movement datafile
#>   date_format: "%Y%m%d" #Date format specification used in movement datafile (empty string "" for "%AD" flexible YMD parser, or see ?readr::parse_date for guidance)
#> 
#> movedata_cols:
#>   from: "departure_cph" #Column name or number for Identifier of origin holding
#>   to: "dest_cph" #Column name or number for Identifier of destination holding
#>   date: "departure_date" #Column name or number for Date of transport
#>   weight: "qty_pigs" #Column name or number for Movement weight (e.g. nr of pigs moved)

Various example config files and empty templates can be found in movenet’s configurations folder.

File and data options

Configurations in the file and data options grouping (movedata_fileopts or holdingdata_fileopts) literally tell movenet how to read a data file.

The following file and data options are required, and config files will not be validated or loaded if these configurations are absent:

separator: separator (or delimiter) character used in the data file
encoding: encoding used in the data file
decimal: decimal mark used in the data file
date_format: date format specification used in the data file (required for movement config files only)

Additionally, holding config files may contain several file and data options that are required if you wish to extract and process columns with geographical coordinates:

coord_EPSG_code: numeric part of the EPSG code for the Coordinate Reference System used in the data file
country_code: two-letter country code for the data in the data file

Column headers/indices

Configurations in the column headers/indices grouping (movedata_cols or holdingdata_cols) indicate columns to be extracted from the data files. They can be provided as column headers (character) or as column indices (integer).

For movement config files, the following column headers/indices are required, and movement config files will not be validated or loaded if these configurations are absent:

from: header/index of the column containing identifiers of the holdings of origin
to: header/index of the column containing identifiers of the destination holdings
date: header/index of the column containing movement dates
weight: header/index of the column containing movement weights/quantities

For holding config files, there is only one required column header/index, and movement config files will not be validated or loaded if this configuration is absent:

id: header/index of the column containing holding identifiers, matching to from/to in movement data

Additionally, holding config files may contain several optional column headers/indices relating to holding properties that are commonly relevant for analyses:

coord_x: header/index of the column containing longitudinal geographical coordinates (x/longitude) of holdings
coord_y: header/index of the column containing latitudinal geographical coordinates (y/latitude) of holdings
herd_size: header/index of the column containing herd sizes

Furthermore, in both movement and holding config files, additional column headers/indices can be included, to indicate optional columns you wish to extract along with the required columns. These optional configurations can be given any name.

Loading a configuration file

The function load_config() first validates a config file, and then loads its configurations into the movenet environment.

Use load_config(configfile), with configfile consisting of either the path to a config file, or the name (minus extension) of a pre-installed config file.

# Load a pre-installed config file by using just its name:
load_config("ScotEID")
#> Successfully loaded config file: ScotEID
# Alternatively, provide the path to any configurations file:
load_config(system.file("configurations", "fakeScotEID_holding.yml", package="movenet"))
#> Successfully loaded config file: C:/Users/cboga/OneDrive - University of Glasgow/Documents/R/win-library/4.1/movenet/configurations/fakeScotEID_holding.yml

The movenet environment can hold one set of movement configurations and one set of holding configurations at the same time.

Querying configurations

The function get_config() can be used to view the configurations currently loaded in the movenet environment.

To view specific configurations, use get_config(...), with the value of each argument consisting of a character string combining the following elements:

"movedata_" or "holdingdata_"
"fileopts" for file options, or "cols" for column headers
a full-stop followed by the configuration name, e.g. ".separator".

Multiple configurations can be queried at once:

# Query the values of specific configurations: 
get_config("movedata_fileopts.separator", "holdingdata_cols.id")
#> $movedata_fileopts.separator
#> [1] ","
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.id
#> [1] "cph"

Alternatively, to get a full list of loaded configurations, use get_config() without arguments:

# Query the values of all configurations: 
get_config()
#> $movedata_fileopts.separator
#> [1] ","
#> 
#> $movedata_fileopts.encoding
#> [1] "UTF-8"
#> 
#> $movedata_fileopts.decimal
#> [1] "."
#> 
#> $movedata_fileopts.date_format
#> [1] "%Y%m%d"
#> 
#> $movedata_cols.from
#> [1] "departure_cph"
#> 
#> $movedata_cols.to
#> [1] "dest_cph"
#> 
#> $movedata_cols.date
#> [1] "departure_date"
#> 
#> $movedata_cols.weight
#> [1] "qty_pigs"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_fileopts.separator
#> [1] ","
#> 
#> $holdingdata_fileopts.encoding
#> [1] "UTF-8"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_fileopts.decimal
#> [1] "."
#> 
#> $holdingdata_fileopts.coord_EPSG_code
#> [1] 27700
#> 
#> $holdingdata_fileopts.country_code
#> [1] "UK"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.id
#> [1] "cph"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.coord_x
#> [1] "easting"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.coord_y
#> [1] "northing"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.type
#> [1] "holding_type"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.herd_size
#> [1] "herd_size"

Saving configurations to a config file

The function save_config() saves the currently loaded configurations to a new config file.

It requires the argument outfile, being the file name (and path) to save the config file to. It also takes an argument config_type that indicates which configurations you would like to save: accepted values are "movement", "holding", or c("movement", "holding") (default).

# Save the currently loaded movement configurations to a new config file:
save_config("saved_movement_config.yml", config_type = "movement")

Copying a config file template to your working directory

The function new_config() copies a config file template to your working directory.

It takes an argument config_type that indicates which config file template you would like to copy: accepted values are "movement", "holding", or c("movement", "holding") (default).

# Copy the movement config file template to your working directory:  
new_config(config_type = "movement")

Changing configurations

The function change_config() can be used to change individual configurations in the movenet environment.

Configuration names and new values should be passed to change_config(...) in name = value format, with each configuration name consisting of a character string combining the following elements:

"movedata_" or "holdingdata_"
"fileopts" for file options, or "cols" for column headers
a full-stop followed by the configuration name, e.g. ".separator".

Multiple configurations can be changed at once:

# Change the values of specific configurations: 
change_config("movedata_fileopts.separator" = ";", "holdingdata_cols.id" = "foo")
# Inspect the changed values in the movenet environment:
get_config("movedata_fileopts.separator", "holdingdata_cols.id")
#> $movedata_fileopts.separator
#> [1] ";"
#> 
#> $holdingdata_cols.id
#> [1] "foo"

Setting a default configuration file

If you use movenet with the same configuration most or all of the time, you may want to have movenet automatically load a configuration file when the movenet package is loaded.

To do this, you should find the movenet/R directory (where the package’s main code is located). Create a file in this directory called zzz.R. In this file, type the following code:

.onLoad <- function(libname, pkgname){
  load_config("ScotEID")
}

where ScotEID can be replaced with whatever configuration you wish to load. Now, whenever the movenet package is loaded, this .onLoad function will be called, loading the desired configuration. See this page for more information on .onLoad and zzz.R.