Describe an SSB table and its dimensions

Returns a compact summary of a table's structure: its title, when it was last updated, and a row for each dimension showing how many codes are available and what role the dimension plays. This is the recommended first call when working with a new table.

Usage

ssb_describe(table_id, language = "no", cache = TRUE, refresh_metadata = FALSE)

Arguments

table_id

Character. The SSB table identifier, for example "07459".

language

Character. Language for labels. "no" (default) or "en".

cache

Logical. If TRUE (the default), table metadata is stored in memory for the session so that repeated calls are fast.

refresh_metadata

Logical. If TRUE, discard any cached metadata and fetch fresh information from SSB. Defaults to FALSE.

Value

A named list with elements $table and $dimensions. See Details for the exact structure.

Details

The function returns a named list with two elements:

$table

A list with table_id, table_label, updated (ISO timestamp), and full_table_estimated_rows (the total number of cells if you were to download the whole table).

$dimensions

A data.frame with one row per dimension, containing the dimension id, its label, its role, the number of available codes (n_codes), and a logical column has_units indicating whether unit metadata is available.

The role column classifies each dimension:

"time"

The primary time dimension.

"geo"

A geographic dimension such as municipality or county.

"contents"

The measure dimension (what is being counted or measured).

"other"

Any other classification variable.

See also

ssb_search() to find table identifiers. ssb_codes() to list valid filter values for a dimension. ssb_units() to inspect measurement units.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
desc <- ssb_describe("07459")

# Print the table-level summary
desc$table

# View the dimension list — use the 'dimension' column as
# the names of filter arguments in get_ssb_data()
desc$dimensions

# Same table with English labels
ssb_describe("07459", language = "en")
} # }