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nomisdata 0.1.0

Overview

First public release of nomisdata, providing modern programmatic access to the UK Nomis labour market database. This release establishes a production-grade foundation for accessing ONS labour market statistics through R.

Core Functionality

Data Retrieval

• fetch_nomis(): Primary data download function with automatic pagination for datasets exceeding API row limits (25,000 guest / 100,000 registered users)
• search_datasets(): Full-text search across Nomis catalogue by name, keywords, and description
• describe_dataset(): Retrieve comprehensive dataset structure and metadata
• dataset_overview(): Get detailed overview with selectable information sections
• get_codes(): Extract dimension codes and hierarchies for query construction
• fetch_codelist(): Download complete code lists for dataset dimensions
• lookup_geography(): Geography code resolution with fuzzy name matching

Spatial Integration

• fetch_spatial(): Download data with KML boundaries for spatial analysis
• Native sf package integration for seamless GIS workflows
• add_geography_names(): Automatic geography name joins
• Support for all standard UK geography levels (countries, regions, local authorities, wards, LSOAs, MSOAs)

Data Processing

• aggregate_geography(): Hierarchical geographic aggregation
• aggregate_time(): Temporal aggregation with flexible period selection
• tidy_names(): Column name standardization with multiple style options

Authentication & Configuration

• set_api_key(): Secure API key management with .Renviron persistence
• Automatic key detection from environment variables
• Clear upgrade path from guest (25K limit) to registered (100K limit) access

User Experience

• browse_dataset(): Open dataset pages in web browser for visual exploration
• explore_dataset(): Interactive console-based dataset explorer
• enable_cache() / clear_cache(): Intelligent cache management for reproducible workflows
• Progress reporting for long-running multi-part queries
• Informative error messages with actionable suggestions

Infrastructure

HTTP Client

• Modern httr2-based client with exponential backoff retry logic
• Automatic handling of transient failures (429, 503, 504 status codes)
• Configurable retry attempts (default: 3) with exponential backoff
• Comprehensive error handling with structured error classes

Caching System

• Metadata caching via memoise for instant repeated queries
• Optional disk-based cache for large data downloads
• Cache validation with age checking (default: 30 days)
• Cryptographic hash-based cache keys for query uniqueness

Type Safety

• Comprehensive parameter validation with early failure detection
• Type checking for all function arguments
• Informative error messages using cli and rlang
• Graceful handling of missing optional dependencies

Testing & Quality Assurance

• 135+ comprehensive tests covering all package functionality
• vcr package integration for offline test fixtures
• 80%+ code coverage across all modules
• Continuous integration via GitHub Actions (macOS, Windows, Linux)
• CRAN-compliant examples with appropriate \donttest{} wrappers

Documentation

Package Documentation

• Complete function documentation with roxygen2
• 5 comprehensive vignettes:
  • Getting Started
• Geography Guide
• Advanced Queries
• Spatial Analysis
• Visualisation Examples
• Publication-quality example Visualisations (12 figures)
• Sample dataset (jsa_sample) for offline examples

Visualisation Gallery

Complete reproduction code for 12 publication-quality figures:

1. National Overview: Current unemployment by UK constituent nations
2. Lorenz Curve: Geographic concentration of unemployment
3. Distribution Analysis: Unemployment by urban hierarchy
4. High Unemployment Areas: Top 20 local authorities
5. Gender Disparities: Male vs female unemployment gaps
6. London Inequality: Within-city variation across 33 boroughs
7. Temporal Dynamics: Year-on-year changes by nation
8. Performance Analysis: Best and worst performing local authorities
9. Multi-Dimensional Dashboard: Integrated 4-panel overview
10. Labour Market Tightness: Employment-unemployment relationships
11. Regional Inequality: Level vs within-region variation
12. Scale-Growth Dynamics: Non-linear unemployment dynamics

All Visualisations use transparent backgrounds for GitHub dark theme compatibility and include comprehensive methodological notes.

Technical Specifications

Performance

• Guest users: 25,000 rows per query
• Registered users: 100,000 rows per query
• Automatic query chunking for larger datasets
• 10-50× speedup for cached queries
• Typical latency: 1-3s (small), 10-30s (large with pagination)

Dependencies

Imports (core functionality): * cli (>= 3.6.0), dplyr (>= 1.1.0), httr2 (>= 1.0.0) * jsonlite (>= 1.8.0), rlang (>= 1.1.0), tibble (>= 3.2.0) * utils, digest, methods

Suggests (enhanced features): * Spatial: sf (>= 1.0.0), rsdmx (>= 0.6.0) * Visualisation: ggplot2 (>= 3.4.0), scales (>= 1.2.0) * Caching: cachem (>= 1.0.0), memoise (>= 2.0.0), rappdirs (>= 0.3.0) * Testing: testthat (>= 3.1.0), vcr (>= 1.2.0), withr (>= 2.5.0) * Documentation: knitr (>= 1.42), rmarkdown (>= 2.20) * Utilities: janitor (>= 2.2.0), readr (>= 2.1.0)

Breaking Changes

None (initial release)

Known Issues

None

Deprecations

None (initial release)

Future Development

Planned for future releases:

• Additional dataset-specific helper functions
• Enhanced geography hierarchy traversal
• Time series analysis utilities
• Parallel query execution for very large downloads
• Interactive Shiny dashboard for data exploration
• Integration with additional UK official statistics sources

Acknowledgments

• Office for National Statistics for maintaining the Nomis database
• Durham University for hosting the Nomis service

Citation

If using nomisdata in published research:

@Manual{nomisdata2024,
title = {nomisdata: Access Nomis UK Labour Market Data and Statistics},
author = {Cheryl Isabella Lim},
year = {2024},
note = {R package version 0.1.0},
url = {https://github.com/cherylisabella/nomisdata},
}

License

MIT © 2025 Cheryl Isabella Lim

For detailed usage instructions, see the package vignettes: r browseVignettes("nomisdata")

For bug reports and feature requests: https://github.com/cherylisabella/nomisdata/issues

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.
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