Use case: the Big Data PE API

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apifetch was extracted from the BigDataPE package, which wraps the Big Data PE platform — a public-data REST API run by the Government of the State of Pernambuco, Brazil. This vignette shows how that service maps onto a single apifetch profile, and is the canonical worked example of configuring the package for a real API.

What is specific about Big Data PE

The Big Data PE API has two conventions that differ from the apifetch defaults:

Authentication sends the token verbatim in the Authorization header (no Bearer prefix) — use af_auth_raw().
Pagination sends limit/offset as HTTP headers, not query parameters — use af_paginate_offset("header").

It also returns a status column named "Mensagem" that we drop when combining chunks (drop_cols = "Mensagem"), and it is only reachable from the PE Conectado network or VPN, which we surface via connect_hint.

Defining the profile

library(apifetch)

bigdatape <- af_api(
  endpoint     = "https://www.bigdata.pe.gov.br/api/buscar",
  service      = "BigDataPE",
  auth         = af_auth_raw(),
  pagination   = af_paginate_offset("header"),
  drop_cols    = "Mensagem",
  connect_hint = "Ensure you are on the PE Conectado network or VPN."
)

Storing a token and fetching

af_store_token("dengue", "your-token-here", service = "BigDataPE")

# A single page of 50 records
dengue <- af_fetch(bigdatape, "dengue", limit = 50)

# Everything, in chunks, with a progress message per chunk
dengue_all <- af_fetch_all(
  bigdatape, "dengue",
  chunk_size = 50000,
  verbosity = 1
)

Note on language

Function and parameter names are English (R convention), but the API’s response column names and some values are Portuguese (e.g. nu_notificacao, "BOA VIAGEM"). That is intentional — they come straight from the upstream service.

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