ctrdata on an R systemThe R Project website (https://www.r-project.org/) provides installers for the R system. It can be used with software products and graphical user interfaces such as R Studio, or from Visual Studio Code.
General information on the ctrdata package is available
here: https://rfhb.github.io/ctrdata/.
In R, execute:
For using the development version of package ctrdata,
install from GitHub:
# install package under development
install.packages(c("remotes"))
remotes::install_github("rfhb/ctrdata", dependencies = TRUE, build_vignettes = TRUE)Either of the above should install package ctrdata into
the user’s library.
At this time, a PostgreSQL, DuckDB, an SQLite or a MongoDB (local or
remote) database can be used with the package ctrdata. A
full SQLite database is provided in the R package RSQLite. Suggested
installation instructions for PostgreSQL are here and for a local
MongoDB server are here;
a remote MongoDB database server is accessible here. See here for a speed
comparison of the databases; recommended: DuckDB, PostgreSQL or MongoDB
local server.
| 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(dbname = "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, ...) |
ctrdataAfter completing the installation, attach the package from the user’s library. This will also check the availability of the additional installation requirements as mentioned above:
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