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Main features • References • Installation • Overview • Databases • Data model • Example workflow • Analysis across trials • Tests • Acknowledgements • Future
The package ctrdata
provides functions for retrieving
(downloading), aggregating and analysing clinical trials using
information (structured protocol and result data, as well as documents)
from public registers. It can be used with the
The motivation is to investigate the design and conduct of trials of
interest, to describe their trends and availability for patients and to
facilitate using their detailed results for research and meta-analyses.
ctrdata
is a package for the R system, but other systems and
tools can use the databases created with this package. This README was
reviewed on 2025-03-09 for version 1.21.0.
Protocol- and results-related trial information is easily
downloaded: Users define a query in a register’s web interface, then
copy the URL and enter it into ctrdata
which retrieves in
one go all trials found. A script
can automate copying the query URL from all registers. Personal
annotations can be made when downloading trials. Also, trial documents and historic
versions as available in registers on trials can be
downloaded.
Downloaded trial information is transformed and stored in a
collection of a document-centric database, for fast and offline access.
Information from different registers can be accumulated in a single
collection. Uses DuckDB
, PostgreSQL
,
RSQLite
or MongoDB
, via R package
nodbi
: see section Databases below.
Interactively browse through trial structure and data. Easily re-run any
previous query in a collection to retrieve and update trial
records.
For analyses, convenience functions in ctrdata
implement canonical trial
concepts to simplify analyses across registers 🔔, allow find
synonyms of an active substance, identify unique (de-duplicated) trial
records across all registers, to merge and recode fields as well as to
easily access deeply-nested fields. Analysis can be done with
R
(see vignette)
or other systems, using the JSON
-structured information in the
database.
Remember to respect the registers’ terms and conditions (see
ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser(copyright = TRUE)
). Please cite
this package in any publication as follows: “Ralf Herold (2025).
ctrdata: Retrieve and Analyze Clinical Trials in Public
Registers. R package version 1.21.0, https://cran.r-project.org/package=ctrdata”.
Package ctrdata
has been used for unpublished works and
for these publications:
ctrdata
in RPackage ctrdata
is on CRAN and on GitHub. Within R, use the following commands to
install package ctrdata
:
# Install CRAN version:
install.packages("ctrdata")
# Alternatively, install development version:
install.packages("devtools")
::install_github("rfhb/ctrdata", build_vignettes = TRUE) devtools
These commands also install the package’s dependencies
(jsonlite
, httr
, curl
,
clipr
, xml2
, nodbi
,
stringi
, tibble
, lubridate
,
jqr
, dplyr
, zip
,
readr
, digest
, countrycode
,
htmlwidgets
, stringdist
and
V8
).
Optional; works with all registers supported by ctrdata
and is recommended for CTIS so that its URL in the web browser reflects
the user’s parameters for querying this register.
In the web browser, install the Tampermonkey browser extension,
click on “New user script” and then on “Tools”, enter into “Import from
URL” this URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfhb/ctrdata/master/tools/ctrdataURLcopier.js
and then click on “Install”.
The browser extension can be disabled and enabled by the user. When
enabled, the URLs to all user’s queries in the registers are
automatically copied to the clipboard and can be pasted into the
queryterm = ...
parameter of function ctrLoadQueryIntoDb().
Additionally, this script retrieves results for CTIS
when opening search URLs such as https://euclinicaltrials.eu/ctis-public/search#searchCriteria={“status”:[3,4]}.
ctrdata
The functions are listed in the approximate order of use in a user’s workflow (in bold, main functions). See also the package documentation overview.
Function name | Function purpose |
---|---|
ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser() |
Open search pages of registers or execute search in web browser |
ctrFindActiveSubstanceSynonyms() |
Find synonyms and alternative names for an active substance |
ctrGenerateQueries() |
From simple user parameters, generates queries for each register to find trials of interest |
ctrGetQueryUrl() |
Import from clipboard the URL of a search in one of the registers |
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb() |
Retrieve (download) or update, and annotate, information on trials from a register and store in a collection in a database |
ctrShowOneTrial() |
🔔 Show full structure and all data of a trial, interactively select
fields of interest for dbGetFieldsIntoDf() |
dbQueryHistory() |
Show the history of queries that were downloaded into the collection |
dbFindIdsUniqueTrials() |
Get the identifiers of de-duplicated trials in the collection |
dbFindFields() |
Find names of variables (fields) in the collection |
dbGetFieldsIntoDf() |
Create a data frame (or tibble) from trial records in the database with the specified fields |
dfTrials2Long() |
Transform the data.frame from dbGetFieldsIntoDf() into
a long name-value data.frame, including deeply nested fields |
dfName2Value() |
From a long name-value data.frame, extract values for variables (fields) of interest (e.g., endpoints) |
dfMergeVariablesRelevel() |
Merge variables into a new variable, optionally map values to a new set of levels |
ctrdata
Package ctrdata
retrieves trial information and stores
it in a database collection, which has to be given as a connection
object to parameter con
for several ctrdata
functions. This connection object is created almost identically for the
four database backends supported by ctrdata
, as shown in
the table. For a speed comparison, see the nodbi
documentation.
Besides ctrdata
functions below, such a connection
object can be used with functions of other packages, such as
nodbi
(see last row in table) or, in case of MongoDB as
database backend, mongolite
(see vignettes).
Purpose | Function call |
---|---|
Create SQLite database connection | dbc <- nodbi::src_sqlite(dbname = "name_of_my_database", collection = "name_of_my_collection") |
Create DuckDB database connection | dbc <- nodbi::src_duckdb(dbdir = "name_of_my_database", collection = "name_of_my_collection") |
Create MongoDB database connection | dbc <- nodbi::src_mongo(db = "name_of_my_database", collection = "name_of_my_collection") |
Create PostgreSQL database connection | dbc <- nodbi::src_postgres(dbname = "name_of_my_database"); dbc[["collection"]] <- "name_of_my_collection" |
Use connection with ctrdata functions |
ctrdata::{ctrLoadQueryIntoDb, dbQueryHistory, dbFindIdsUniqueTrials, dbFindFields, dbGetFieldsIntoDf}(con = dbc, ...) |
Use connection with nodbi functions |
e.g.,
nodbi::docdb_query(src = dbc, key = dbc$collection, ...) |
ctrdata
Package ctrdata
uses the data models that are implicit
in data as retrieved from the different registers. No mapping is
provided for any register’s data model to a putative target data model.
The reasons include that registers’ data models are continually evolving
over time, that only few data fields have similar values and meaning
between registers, and that the retrieved public data may not correspond
to the registers’ internal data model. The structure of data for a
specific trial can interactively be inspected and searched using
function, see the section below.
Thus, the handling of data from different models of registers is to
be done at the time of analysis. This approach allows a high level of
flexibility, transparency and reproducibility. To support analyses,
ctrdata
(from version 1.21.0) provides functions that
calculate concepts of clinical trials across registers, which are
commonly used in analyses, such as start dates, age groups and
statistical tests of results. See help(ctrdata-trial-concepts)
and the section Analysis across
trials in the example workflow below. For further analyses, see
examples of function dfMergeVariablesRelevel()
on how to align related fields from different registers for a joint
analysis.
In any of the databases,
one clinical trial is one document, corresponding to one row in a
SQLite
, PostgreSQL
or DuckDB
table, and to one document in a MongoDB
collection. These
NoSQL
backends allow documents to have different
structures, which is used here to accommodate the different models of
data retrieved from the registers. Package ctrdata
stores
in every such document:
_id
with the trial identification as provided by
the register from which it was retrievedctrname
with the name of the register
(EUCTR
, CTGOV
, CTGOV2
,
ISRCTN
, CTIS
) from which that trial was
retrievedrecord_last_import
with the date and time when
that document was last updated using
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb()
CTGOV2
: object history
with a
historic version of the trial and with history_version
,
which contains the fields version_number
(starting from 1)
and version_date
For visualising the data structure for a trial, see this vignette section.
The aim is to download protocol-related trial information and tabulate the trials’ status of conduct.
ctrdata
:library(ctrdata)
ctrdata
:help("ctrdata")
ctrdata
(last updated 2025-03-09):help("ctrdata-registers")
ctrdata
(new 2025-03-09 🔔):help("ctrdata-trial-concepts")
ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser()
# Please review and respect register copyrights:
ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser(copyright = TRUE)
Adjust search parameters and execute search in browser
When trials of interest are listed in browser, copy the address from the browser’s address bar to the clipboard (you can automate this, see here)
Search used in this example: https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?query=neuroblastoma&phase=phase-two&age=children
Get address from clipboard:
<- ctrGetQueryUrl()
q # * Using clipboard content as register query URL: https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/
# ctr-search/search?query=neuroblastoma&phase=phase-two&age=children
# * Found search query from EUCTR: query=neuroblastoma&phase=phase-two&age=children
q# query-term query-register
# 1 query=neuroblastoma&phase=phase-two&age=children EUCTR
🔔 Queries in the trial registers can automatically copied to the clipboard (including for “CTIS”, where the URL otherwise does not show the user’s query) using the solution here.
For loading the trial information, first a database collection is
specified, using nodbi
(see above for how to specify
PostgreSQL
, RSQlite
, DuckDB
or
MongoDB
as backend, see section Databases):
# Connect to (or create) an SQLite database
# stored in a file on the local system:
<- nodbi::src_sqlite(
db dbname = "some_database_name.sqlite_file",
collection = "some_collection_name"
)
Then, the trial information is retrieved and loaded into the collection:
# Retrieve trials from public register:
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = q,
euctrresults = TRUE,
con = db
)# * Checking trials in EUCTR...
# Retrieved overview, multiple records of 73 trial(s) from 4 page(s) to be downloaded (estimate: 9 MB)
# (1/3) Downloading trials...
# Note: register server cannot compress data, transfer takes longer (estimate: 90 s)
# Download status: 4 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 6.39 Mb (100%)... done!
# (2/3) Converting to NDJSON (estimate: 1 s)...
# (3/3) Importing records into database...
# = Imported or updated 270 records on 73 trial(s)
# * Checking results if available from EUCTR for 73 trials:
# (1/4) Downloading results...
# Download status: 73 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 22.57 Mb (100%)... done!
# Download status: 41 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 165.04 Kb (100%)... done!
# Download status: 41 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 165.04 Kb (100%)... done!
# - extracting results (. = data, F = file[s] and data, x = none):
# F F . . . . . . . F . . . F . . . F . . . . . F . . . . . . . F
# (2/4) Converting to NDJSON (estimate: 3 s)...
# (3/4) Importing results into database (may take some time)...
# (4/4) Results history: not retrieved (euctrresultshistory = FALSE)
# = Imported or updated results for 32 trials
# No history found in expected format.
# Updated history ("meta-info" in "some_collection_name")
# $n
# [1] 270
Under the hood, EUCTR plain text and XML files from EUCTR, CTGOV,
ISRCTN are converted using Javascript via V8
in
R
into NDJSON
, which is imported into the
database collection.
The same parameters can be used to ask ctrdata
to
generate search queries that apply to each register, for opening the web
interfaces and for loading the trial data into the collection:
# Generate queries for each register
<- ctrGenerateQueries(
queries condition = "neuroblastoma",
recruitment = "completed",
phase = "phase 2",
population = "P"
)
queries# EUCTR
# "https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?query=neuroblastoma&phase=phase-two
# &age=children&age=adolescent&age=infant-and-toddler&age=newborn&age=preterm-new-born-infants
# &age=under-18&status=completed"
# CTGOV2
# "https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?cond=neuroblastoma&aggFilters=phase:2,ages:child,status:com"
# ISRCTN
# "https://www.isrctn.com/search?&filters=condition:neuroblastoma,phase:Phase II,ageRange:Child,trialStatus:completed&q="
# CTIS
# "https://euclinicaltrials.eu/ctis-public/search#searchCriteria={\"medicalCondition\":
# \"neuroblastoma\",\"trialPhaseCode\":[4],\"ageGroupCode\":[2],\"status\":[5,8]}"
# Open queries in registers' web interfaces
sapply(queries, ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser)
# Load all queries into database collection
<- lapply(queries, ctrLoadQueryIntoDb, con = db)
result
sapply(result, "[[", "n")
# EUCTR CTGOV2 ISRCTN CTIS
# 180 111 0 1
Tabulate the status of trials that are part of an agreed paediatric
development program (paediatric investigation plan, PIP).
ctrdata
functions return a data.frame (or a tibble, if
package tibble
is loaded).
# Get all records that have values in the fields of interest:
<- dbGetFieldsIntoDf(
result # Field of interest
fields = c("a7_trial_is_part_of_a_paediatric_investigation_plan"),
# Trial concepts calculated across registers
calculate = c("f.statusRecruitment", "f.isUniqueTrial"),
con = db
)# Querying database (35 fields)...
# - Finding duplicates among registers' and sponsor ids...
# - 114 EUCTR _id were not preferred EU Member State record for 40 trials
# - Keeping 111 / 34 / 0 / 0 / 1 records from CTGOV2 / EUCTR / CTGOV / ISRCTN / CTIS
# Tabulate the clinical trial information of interest
with(
$.isUniqueTrial, ],
result[resulttable(
.statusRecruitment,
a7_trial_is_part_of_a_paediatric_investigation_plan
)
)# a7_trial_is_part_of_a_paediatric_investigation_plan
# .statusRecruitment FALSE TRUE
# ongoing 3 2
# completed 13 5
# ended early 5 4
# other 9 4
The new website and API introduced in July 2023 (https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/) is supported by
ctrdata
since mid-2023 and identified in
ctrdata
as CTGOV2
.
On 2024-06-25, CTGOV
has retired the classic website and
API used by ctrdata
since 2015. To support users,
ctrdata
automatically translates and redirects queries to
the current website. This helps with automatically updating previously
loaded queries
(ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(querytoupdate = <n>)
), manually
migrating queries and reproducible work on clinical trials information.
Going forward, users are recommended to change to use
CTGOV2
queries.
As regards study data, important differences exist between field
names and contents of information retrieved using CTGOV
or
CTGOV2
; see the schema
for study protocols in CTGOV
, the schema
for study results and the Study
Data Structure for CTGOV2
. For more details, call
help("ctrdata-registers")
. This is one of the reasons why
ctrdata
handles the situation as if these were two
different registers and will continue to identify the current API as
register = "CTGOV2"
, to support the analysis stage.
Note that loading trials with ctrdata
overwrites the
previous record with CTGOV2
data, whether the previous
record was retrieved using CTGOV
or CTGOV2
queries.
Example using a CTGOV query:
# CTGOV search query URL
<- "https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=neuroblastoma&rslt=With&recrs=e&age=0&intr=Drug"
q
# Open old URL (CTGOV) in current website (CTGOV2):
ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser(q)
# * Appears specific for CTGOV Classic website
# Since 2024-06-25, the classic CTGOV servers are no longer available.
# Package ctrdata has translated the classic CTGOV query URL from this call
# of function ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(queryterm = ...) into a query URL that works
# with the current CTGOV2. This is printed below and is also part of the return
# value of this function, ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(...)$url. This URL can be used with
# ctrdata functions. Note that the fields and data schema of trials differ
# between CTGOV and CTGOV2.
#
# Replace this URL:
#
# https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=neuroblastoma&rslt=With&recrs=e&age=0&intr=Drug
#
# with this URL:
#
# https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?cond=neuroblastoma&intr=Drug&aggFilters=ages:child,results:with,status:com
#
# * Found search query from CTGOV2: cond=neuroblastoma&intr=Drug&aggFilters=ages:child,results:with,status:com
# Count trials:
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = q,
con = db,
only.count = TRUE
)# $n
# [1] 70
Queries in the CTIS search interface can be automatically copied to
the clipboard so that a user can paste them into queryterm
,
see here.
Subsequent to the relaunch of CTIS on 2024-07-18, there are more than
8,700 trials publicly accessible in CTIS. See below for how to download documents from
CTIS.
# See how many trials are in CTIS publicly accessible:
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = "",
register = "CTIS",
only.count = TRUE
)# $n
# [1] 8783
For a given trial, function ctrShowOneTrial() enables the user to visualise the hiearchy of fields and contents in the user’s local web browser, to search for field names and field values, and to select and copy selected fields’ names for use with function dbGetFieldsIntoDf().
# This opens a local browser for user interaction.
# If the trial identifier (_id) is not found in the
# specified collection, it will be retrieved from the register.
ctrShowOneTrial(
identifier = "2024-518931-12-00",
con = db
)
Show cumulative start of trials over time. This uses the calculation
of trial concepts as available since ctrdata
version 1.21.0
🔔.
# use helper package
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
<- dbGetFieldsIntoDf(
df fields = "",
calculate = c("f.statusRecruitment", "f.isUniqueTrial", "f.startDate"),
con = db)
%>%
df filter(.isUniqueTrial) %>%
ggplot() +
stat_ecdf(aes(
x = .startDate,
colour = .statusRecruitment)) +
labs(
title = "Evolution over time of selected trials",
subtitle = "Data from EUCTR, CTIS, ISRCTN, CTGOV2",
x = "Date of start (proposed or realised)",
y = "Cumulative proportion of trials",
colour = "Current status",
caption = Sys.Date()
)
ggsave(
filename = "man/figures/README-ctrdata_across_registers.png",
width = 5, height = 3, units = "in"
)
Analyse some simple result details, here from CTGOV2 (see this vignette for more examples):
# use helper package
library(ggplot2)
<- dbGetFieldsIntoDf(
result calculate = c(
"f.numSites",
"f.sampleSize",
"f.controlType",
"f.numTestArmsSubstances"),
con = db
)
ggplot(data = result) +
labs(
title = "Selected trials",
subtitle = "Patients with a neuroblastoma"
+
) geom_point(
mapping = aes(
x = .numSites,
y = .sampleSize,
size = .numTestArmsSubstances,
colour = .controlType
)+
) scale_x_log10() +
scale_y_log10() +
labs(
x = "Number of sites",
y = "Total number of participants",
colour = "Control",
size = "# Treatments",
caption = Sys.Date()
)ggsave(
filename = "man/figures/README-ctrdata_results_neuroblastoma.png",
width = 5, height = 3, units = "in"
)
./files-.../
### EUCTR document files can be downloaded when results are requested
# All files are downloaded and saved (documents.regexp is not used with EUCTR)
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = "query=cancer&age=under-18&phase=phase-one",
register = "EUCTR",
euctrresults = TRUE,
documents.path = "./files-euctr/",
con = db
)# * Found search query from EUCTR: query=cancer&age=under-18&phase=phase-one
# * Checking trials in EUCTR...
# [...]
# = documents saved in './files-euctr'
# Updated history ("meta-info" in "some_collection_name")
### CTGOV files are downloaded, here corresponding to the default of
# documents.regexp = "prot|sample|statist|sap_|p1ar|p2ars|ctalett|lay|^[0-9]+ "
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = "cond=Neuroblastoma&type=Intr&recrs=e&phase=1&u_prot=Y&u_sap=Y&u_icf=Y",
register = "CTGOV",
documents.path = "./files-ctgov/",
con = db
)# * Checking for documents...
# - Getting links to documents
# - Downloading documents into 'documents.path' = ./files-ctgov/
# - Created directory ./files-ctgov
# - Applying 'documents.regexp' to 40 missing documents
# - Creating subfolder for each trial
# - Downloading 40 missing documents
# Download status: 40 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 110.75 Mb (100%)... done!
# = Newly saved 40 document(s) for 32 trial(s); 0 of such document(s) for 0 trial(s)
# already existed in ./files-ctgov
### CTGOV2 files are downloaded, using the default of documents.regexp
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = "https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?cond=neuroblastoma&aggFilters=phase:1,results:with",
documents.path = "./files-ctgov2/",
con = db
)# * Checking for documents...
# - Getting links to documents
# - Downloading documents into 'documents.path' = ./files-ctgov2/
# - Created directory ./files-ctgov2
# - Creating subfolder for each trial
# - Applying 'documents.regexp' to 42 missing documents
# - Downloading 42 missing documents
# Download status: 42 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 92.57 Mb (100%)... done!
# = Newly saved 42 document(s) for 26 trial(s); 0 of such document(s) for 0
# trial(s) already existed in ./files-ctgov2
### ISRCTN files are downloaded, using the default of documents.regexp
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = "https://www.isrctn.com/search?q=alzheimer",
documents.path = "./files-isrctn/",
con = db
)# * Found search query from ISRCTN: q=alzheimer
# [...]
# * Checking for documents...
# - Getting links to documents
# - Downloading documents into 'documents.path' = ./files-isrctn/
# - Created directory /Users/ralfherold/Daten/mak/r/emea/ctrdata/files-isrctn
# - Applying 'documents.regexp' to 52 missing documents
# - Creating subfolder for each trial
# - Downloading 32 missing documents
# Download status: 32 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 14.89 Mb (100%)... done!
# = Newly saved 26 document(s) for 15 trial(s); 0 of such document(s) for 0
# trial(s) already existed in ./files-isrctn
### CTIS files are downloaded, using the default of documents.regexp
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = paste0(
'https://euclinicaltrials.eu/ctis-public/search#',
'searchCriteria={"containAny":"cancer","status":[8]}'),
documents.path = "./files-ctis/",
documents.regexp = "icf",
con = db
)# * Found search query from CTIS: searchCriteria={"containAny":"cancer"}
# [...]
# * Checking for documents: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
# - Downloading documents into 'documents.path' = ./files-ctis/
# - Applying 'documents.regexp' to 1114 missing documents
# - Creating subfolder for each trial
# - Downloading 512 missing documents (excluding 2 files with duplicate names
# for saving, e.g. /Users/ralfherold/Daten/mak/r/emea/ctrdata/files-ctis/2022-
# 500694-14-00/SbjctInfaICF - L1 SIS and ICF Prescreening ICF clean placeholder
# - 137297.PDF, /Users/ralfherold/Daten/mak/r/emea/ctrdata/files-ctis/2022-
# 500694-14-00/SbjctInfaICF - L1 SIS and ICF Pregnant Partner ICF clean -
# 137297.PDF)
# Download status: 510 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 377.27 Kb (100%)... done!
# Redirecting to CDN...
# Download status: 127 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 47.66 Mb (100%)... done!
# = Newly saved 510 document(s) for 35 trial(s); 0 of such document(s) for 0
# trial(s) already existed in ./files-ctis
See also https://app.codecov.io/gh/rfhb/ctrdata/tree/master/R
::test_all()
tinytest# test_ctrdata_ctrfindactivesubstance.R 4 tests OK 0.8s
# test_ctrdata_duckdb_ctgov2.R.. 78 tests OK 47.3s
# test_ctrdata_function_ctrgeneratequeries.R 12 tests OK 4ms
# test_ctrdata_function_dfcalculate.R 26 tests OK 2.0s
# test_ctrdata_other_functions.R 67 tests OK 3.1s
# test_ctrdata_postgres_ctgov2.R 50 tests OK 32.0s
# test_ctrdata_sqlite_ctgov.R... 108 tests OK 30.8s
# test_ctrdata_sqlite_ctgov2.R.. 50 tests OK 26.8s
# test_ctrdata_sqlite_ctis.R.... 63 tests OK 49.4s
# test_ctrdata_sqlite_euctr.R... 115 tests OK 44.2s
# test_ctrdata_sqlite_isrctn.R.. 38 tests OK 12.5s
# test_euctr_error_sample.R..... 8 tests OK 0.2s
# All ok, 619 results (4m 9.2s)
::package_coverage(path = ".", type = "tests")
covr# ctrdata Coverage: 94.06%
# R/ctrShowOneTrial.R: 57.89%
# R/ctrRerunQuery.R: 74.85%
# R/zzz.R: 80.95%
# R/dbGetFieldsIntoDf.R: 86.90%
# R/util_functions.R: 89.52%
# R/ctrLoadQueryIntoDbEuctr.R: 90.08%
# R/ctrGetQueryUrl.R: 90.09%
# R/ctrLoadQueryIntoDbIsrctn.R: 92.45%
# R/ctrLoadQueryIntoDbCtgov2.R: 92.90%
# R/ctrFindActiveSubstanceSynonyms.R: 93.62%
# R/dfMergeVariablesRelevel.R: 94.29%
# R/ctrLoadQueryIntoDb.R: 94.81%
# R/ctrLoadQueryIntoDbCtis.R: 95.26%
# R/dbFindFields.R: 95.88%
# R/vct_primaryEndpointResults.R: 96.27%
# R/ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser.R: 97.37%
# R/dbFindIdsUniqueTrials.R: 97.87%
# R/vct_numTestArmsSubstances.R: 97.95%
# R/ctrGenerateQueries.R: 100.00%
# R/dbQueryHistory.R: 100.00%
# R/dfName2Value.R: 100.00%
# R/dfTrials2Long.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_controlType.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_isMedIntervTrial.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_isPlatformTrial.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_isUniqueTrial.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_numSites.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_primaryEndpointDescription.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_resultsDate.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_sampleSize.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_sponsorType.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_startDate.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_statusRecruitment.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_trialObjectives.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_trialPhase.R: 100.00%
# R/vct_trialPopulation.R: 100.00%
See project outline https://github.com/users/rfhb/projects/1
Authentication, expected to be required by CTGOV2; specifications not yet known (work not yet started).
Explore further registers (exploration is continually ongoing; added value, terms and conditions for programmatic access vary; no clear roadmap is established yet).
Implemented:
Retrieve previous versions of protocol- or results-related
information. The challenges include, historic versions can only be
retrieved one-by-one, do not include results, or are not in structured
format. The functionality available with version 1.17.3 to the extent
that is possible at this time, namely for protocol- and results-related
information in CTGOV2, only
Canonical definitions, filters, calculations are in the
works (since August 2023) for data mangling and analyses across
registers, e.g. to define study population, identify interventional
trials, calculate study duration; public collaboration on these
canonical scripts will speed up harmonising analyses.
Merge results-related fields retrieved from different
registers, such as corresponding endpoints (work not yet started). The
challenge is the incomplete congruency and different structure of data
fields.
Data providers and curators of the clinical trial registers.
Please review and respect their copyrights and terms and conditions, see
ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser(copyright = TRUE)
.
Package ctrdata
has been made possible building on
the work done for R, clipr. curl, dplyr, duckdb, httr, jqr, jsonlite, lubridate, mongolite, nodbi, RPostgres, RSQLite, rvest, stringi and xml2.
Information in trial registers may not be fully correct; see for example this publication on CTGOV.
A warning may be issued and a record not imported if the complexity of the XML content is too high for processing. The issue can be resolved by increasing in the operating system the stack size available to R, see: https://github.com/rfhb/ctrdata/issues/22
Please file issues and bugs here. Also check out how to handle some of the closed issues, e.g. on C stack usage too close to the limit and on a SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate.
It is recommended to use nodbi >= 0.10.7.9000 which builds on RSQLite >= 2.3.7.9014 (releases expected in November 2024), because these versions enable file-based imports and thus are much faster:
# install latest development versions:
::install_github("ropensci/nodbi")
devtools
# requires compilation, for which under MS Windows
# automatically additional R Tools are installed:
::install_github("r-dbi/RSQLite") devtools
These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
Health stats visible at Monitor.