Handling field types in database interaction with R

Question

I use RMySQL and a MySQL database to store my datasets. Sometimes data gets revised or I store results back to the database as well. Long story short, there is quite some in

Answer 1

Ok, I got a working solution now. Here's a function that maps MySQL field types to R classes. This helps in particular handling the MySQL field type date...

dbReadMap <- function(con,table){
    statement <- paste("DESCRIBE ",table,sep="")
    desc <- dbGetQuery(con=con,statement)[,1:2]

  # strip row_names if exists because it's an attribute and not real column
  # otherweise it causes problems with the row count if the table has a row_names col
  if(length(grep(pattern="row_names",x=desc)) != 0){
  x <- grep(pattern="row_names",x=desc)
  desc <- desc[-x,]
  }



    # replace length output in brackets that is returned by describe
    desc[,2] <- gsub("[^a-z]","",desc[,2])

    # building a dictionary 
    fieldtypes <- c("int","tinyint","bigint","float","double","date","character","varchar","text")
    rclasses <- c("as.numeric","as.numeric","as.numeric","as.numeric","as.numeric","as.Date","as.character","as.character","as.character") 
    fieldtype_to_rclass = cbind(fieldtypes,rclasses)

    map <- merge(fieldtype_to_rclass,desc,by.x="fieldtypes",by.y="Type")
    map$rclasses <- as.character(map$rclasses)
    #get data
    res <- dbReadTable(con=con,table)



    i=1
    for(i in 1:length(map$rclasses)) {
        cvn <- call(map$rclasses[i],res[,map$Field[i]])
        res[map$Field[i]] <- eval(cvn)
    }


    return(res)
}

Maybe this is not good programming practice – I just don't know any better. So, use it at your own risk or help me to improve it... And of course it's only half of it: reading. Hopefully I´ll find some time to write a writing function soon.

If you have suggestions for the mapping dictionary let me know :)