Thanks for putting together the API and the {ipumsr} package!
I tried out the API using {ipumsr} and I had a few questions/suggestions:
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Is it possible to see how long each step of generating the extract took, for a completed call? Also, is there any way to generate an estimate of how long an extract will take? For example, I might want to know that an extract only takes a minute, or 15 min, so I can plan to work on something else in the meantime. I understand also that the API is not meant to be interactive, but I wonder if something like a progress bar regarding the status of the extract could be helpful for users, such as
https://github.com/r-lib/progress. -
I was confused about the text printed with submit_extract() and get_extract_info(“usa:1”) (“Submitted…, Description…, Samples…, Variables…”) which is not all of the information provided by the API when you assign it to an object with “test ← submit_extract()”. Maybe a statement that says something like “To see more information about this extract, save this call to an object.” Or, print less information (and/or only print it once) - I think it can be confusing that there are 4 pieces of information printed here, but there are actually 11 pieces of information when you save it.
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I think the wait_for_extract( ) function could be more useful if it printed the status of the extract after it printed ie, “Checking extract status…QUEUED”, so you could see what stage the extract was in.
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The package could possibly combine get_recent_extracts_info_list( ) and get_recent_extracts_info_tbl( ) into one function like “see_recent_extracts( )”, with an argument for “type = list” or “type = tbl” so folks could select which they wanted. (It is also a little confusing that the tbl has a lot more information than the list, see above point)
Thanks! I’ll continue to explore the package.