R.md

R Coding Practices

• Functions should be all lower case with underscores separating words
  • my_function = function { ...
• Variable names should be broken with underscores and prefixed with a data type signifier
  • str_a_long_name
• Constants should be in all caps
  • A_CONSTANT
• Underscores are used as most OO languages reserve . for properties
• Use = for assignment as opposed to <-, in contridiction to all other R standards. It's fewer keystroks and there's only really a distinction for legacy reasons, and global assignment in function calls. If writing a package to be released on CRAN, devtools offers a function to replace assignment =s with <- anyway.
• When writing packages for release on CRAN, never use library calls. Explicitly use :: instead
• Use spaces between parameters
  • my_function(a = "foo", b = "bar")
• Shiny server and UI functions should follow best practices found here
  • Shiny server and UI functions should be in title case
    • MyServerFunction, coupled with MyServerFunctionUI
  • Modularised code should be stored in a library in seperate files with the filename as the name of the function
    • MyServerFunction.R contains MyServerFunction = function(input, output, ...)
• Comments should be placed above code, or two spaces after inline code. A single space should follow the hash before the comment
  • x = "hi"<two spaces># example comment (GitHub markdown trims whitespace)
• In unit testing it is nessesery to mock functions called by the unit you are testing. To aviod confusion, but make it clear which funtion is being mocked use:
  • A the function function_to_mock is mocked by function FuntionToMock.

Data Prefixes

• dt_ - data.tables
• df_ - data.frames
• str_ - vectorised strings
• <none> - vectorised integers (Not sure about this... might be useful to have something)
• n_ - counts, should be vector of length 1
• ptn_ - regex patterns
• ls_ - list

Queries

• get_ - SELECT queries
• q_ - all other queries
• qr_ - query requests