Adds bcdc_list_organizations() & bcdc_list_organization_records() (#322)

[stephhazlitt]

• adds bcdc_list_organizations()
• adds bcdc_list_organization_records()
• adds unit tests for the above new fxns
• updates NEWS.md

Closes #322.

[ateucher]

This looks awesome, thanks! The one thing we're not doing here (and in bcdc_list_group_records() is checking for a valid group. If you do bcdc_list_organization_records("foo") it just returns 404.

I played around with checking via:

if (!organization %in% bcdc_list_organizations()) {
  stop("'", organization, "' is not a valid organization", call. = FALSE)
}

but it's sloooowwww, especially with groups. I'm not sure it's worth it. Thoughts?

[stephhazlitt]

I am not surprised it is slooooow, given how slow all of the bcdc_list_* functions are in general. Is there a technique to catch the 404 and add a more informative error?

[boshek]

Looks great. I regret not thinking of this at the time but the bcdc_list_* naming convention for something that returns a data.frame is a bit confusing. But we are sorted of locked now which is probably fine.

[ateucher]

Is there a technique to catch the 404 and add a more informative error?

We could, but the error message that comes back basically just says the url is not found, so we'd be throwing all 404s into one message (i.e., if it 404'd because the catalogue was down people would still get an error telling them that their organization/group doesn't exist)

[stephhazlitt]

the bcdc_list_* naming convention for something that returns a data.frame is a bit confusing

I agree. However, I also think that a user mental model where they are primarily thinking about the class of the object returned is probably less frequent than where they are thinking about what content is in the object returned. 🤷‍♀️

[stephhazlitt]

We could add a note to the documentation for those fxns "if you supply an invalid group | organization you will get a 404"? I have often thought of adding a general sentence somewhere re: 404s when the catalogue is down, given the frequency we see that in Issues.

[ateucher]

the bcdc_list_* naming convention for something that returns a data.frame is a bit confusing

I see list as a verb here rather than a noun, so it doesn't bother me that much 😄

[ateucher]

Thanks so much! One small suggestion then go ahead and merge when you're happy :)

[ateucher]

Also sf installation is broken right now - don't worry about that failure on Linux