strata

The goal of strata is to provide a framework for workflow automation and reproducible analyses for R users and teams who may not have access to many modern automation tooling and/or are otherwise resource-constrained. Strata aims to be simple and allow users to adopt it with minimal changes to existing code and use whatever automation they have access to. There is only one target file users will need to automate, main.R, which will run through the entire project with the settings they specified as they build their strata of code. Strata is designed to get out of the users’ way and play nice with packages like renv, cronR, and taskscheduleR.

Installation

To install the latest CRAN release, just run:

install.packages("strata")

You can install the development version of strata from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("asenetcky/strata")

Getting Started Using strata

strata provides users with framework for easier automation with the tools they already have at hand. Users will want to make a folder for their strata project. strata works best when bundled inside of an RStudio project folder and the renv package, but can be made to work without those is desired.

After calling the strata package users will want to start hollowing out spaces for their code to live. Calling strata::build_stratum and providing a name and path to your project folder will add a ‘stratum’ to project, as well as a main.R script and a .strata.toml file.

Next users will want to call strata::build_lamina with a name and path to your stratum you created in the previous step. This creates a subfolder of your stratum where you R code will live, as well as a .laminae.toml. It’s good to group like-code together inside of a ‘lamina’. Users can have as many stratum as needed with as many laminae and their associated R scripts that users deem necessary.

main.R and its associated function main is the entry point to your project and the target that users will automate the execution of. When executed main will read those .toml files and begin sourcing the pipelines in the order specified by the user/.toml files, and within a stratum it will execute the laminae in the order specified by the user and their specific .toml file. Within a lamina the scripts will be sourced however the user’s operating system has ordered the scripts, often alphabetically.

strata provides basic, but consistent logging functions that are used at run time, and are available for use inside of users’ code if they desire.

Examples

Here is a standard example using strata:

library(strata)

tmp <- fs::dir_create(fs::file_temp())
strata::build_stratum(
  project_path = tmp,
  stratum_name = "first_stratum",
  order = 1
)

stratum_path <-
  fs::path(
    tmp, "strata", "first_stratum"
  )
strata::build_lamina(
  stratum_path = stratum_path,
  lamina_name = "first_lamina",
  order = 1
)
strata::build_lamina(
  stratum_path = stratum_path,
  lamina_name = "second_lamina",
  order = 2
)

lamina_path1 <- fs::path(stratum_path, "first_lamina")
lamina_path2 <- fs::path(stratum_path, "second_lamina")
code_path1 <- fs::path(lamina_path1, "my_code1.R")
code_path2 <- fs::path(lamina_path2, "my_code2.R")


my_code1 <- fs::file_create(code_path1)
my_code2 <- fs::file_create(code_path2)
cat(file = my_code1, "print('Hello, World!')")
cat(file = my_code2, "print('Goodbye, World!')")

source(fs::path(tmp, "main.R"))
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2781] INFO: Strata started 
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2785] INFO: Stratum: first_stratum initialized 
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2787] INFO: Lamina: first_lamina initialized 
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2790] INFO: Executing: my_code1 
#> [1] "Hello, World!"
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2795] INFO: Lamina: first_lamina finished 
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2797] INFO: Lamina: second_lamina initialized 
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2799] INFO: Executing: my_code2 
#> [1] "Goodbye, World!"
#> [2024-11-19 13:26:07.2807] INFO: Strata finished - duration: 0.0028 seconds
fs::dir_delete(tmp)

Users can also opt to use quick build functions if speed is the priority and the naming conventions are not important.

tmp <- fs::dir_create(fs::file_temp())

strata::build_quick_strata_project(
  project_path = tmp,
  num_strata = 3,
  num_laminae_per = 2
)

fs::dir_tree(tmp)
#> /tmp/Rtmp5E3GPs/file22e3552586a20
#> ├── main.R
#> └── strata
#>     ├── stratum_1
#>     │   ├── s1_lamina_1
#>     │   │   └── my_code.R
#>     │   └── s1_lamina_2
#>     │       └── my_code.R
#>     ├── stratum_2
#>     │   ├── s2_lamina_1
#>     │   │   └── my_code.R
#>     │   └── s2_lamina_2
#>     │       └── my_code.R
#>     └── stratum_3
#>         ├── s3_lamina_1
#>         │   └── my_code.R
#>         └── s3_lamina_2
#>             └── my_code.R
fs::dir_delete(tmp)