The searcher
package (CRAN, GitHub) provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Twitter, StackOverflow, RStudio Community, GitHub, and BitBucket. Upon calling a search_*()
function, a browser window will open with the search results for the query.
That said, a new year means new searcher
capabilities! The searcher
package received its biggest ever overhaul to date in its quest to provide a stable and customizable API. In particular, the search_*()
functions are now generated using a function factory alongside pre-defined values. By changing the underlying structure, searcher
gains future-proofing and a lower maintenance cost as code is no longer repeated multiple for each search portal.
Furthermore, this release gains a new set of customization toggles accessible via options()
that allow for improved package experiences. In particular, the default search term used can be switched from a “base R” perspective to a “tidyverse” perspective by setting searcher.default_keyword = "tidyverse"
in ~/.Rprofile
.
Lastly, in a long overdue sense, searcher
now has the ability to search Twitter’s #rstats
community! The #rstats
hash tag is a central location for discussions on R within Twitter. Try it out with:
::search_twitter("datasaurus ggplot2") searcher
For more details, please see the full NEWS entry below.
searcher
news file entry for version 0.0.5 (2020-02-06)
Features
- Added search portal:
- Added ability to set default package actions. (#7, #20)
searcher.launch_delay
controls how long the user remains in R prior to the browser opening. Default is0.5
seconds.searcher.use_rstudio_viewer
specifies whether RStudio’s viewer pane should open the link instead of a web browser. Default isFALSE
until RStudio’s sandbox issue is resolved.searcher.default_keyword
: Suffix keyword to focus search results between either"base"
or"tidyverse"
. Default is"base"
.
- Added option to launch RStudio’s Viewer pane to display search results.
- Note: This feature requires a patch per rstudio/rstudio#2252. (#21, #22)
Breaking Changes
- Function factory or a closure approach-based approach is now used to create search portal functions
search_*()
throughsearcher()
. searcher()
function has lost the ability to specifyrlang
to address an unevaluated promise issue.
Fixes
- Addressed internal vignette index name being used as the title.
Deployment
- Switched from using TravisCI to using GitHub Actions for R. (#25, #27)
- Improved code coverage of unit tests (#29)