Read the request register's data dictionary

The dictionary is the schema, and it lives as a file rather than as R code because REDCap imports it as it is: one artifact, two consumers.

Usage

register_dictionary(instances = NULL)

Arguments

instances

Character vector of instance names, or NULL for the template. A zero-length vector is refused rather than treated as NULL: NULL means "I am not passing it", while character(0) asserts that the fleet is empty, and the two must not reach the same result by opposite routes. Empty or missing names are refused for the same reason — they would become the choice ", " inside a dictionary that looks sound.

Value

A data frame with the eighteen columns of a REDCap data dictionary.

Details

Sixteen of its seventeen fields are exactly that. The seventeenth is not: the choices of server are the fleet, a piece of operating data that changes when the machines change rather than when the contract does. Kept in the file, it coupled a release of this package to every movement of the fleet, and published the list in a public repository. So the packaged file is a template with that one cell empty, and the caller supplies the list.

The template is deliberately not importable: REDCap refuses a radio with no choices, so the template cannot be imported by mistake in place of the real dictionary. A recognizable placeholder would have been importable, and would have produced a project carrying one invented choice — a file that looks like it worked costs more than one that refuses to.