googleformr is an API to Google Forms, allowing users to POST data securely to Google Forms without needing authentication or permissioning.

Installation

To download the development version of googleformr:

Download the zip ball or tar ball, decompress and run R CMD INSTALL on it, or use the pacman package to install the development version:

if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
pacman::p_load_gh("data-steve/googleformr")

Get User Feedback with googleformr

googleformr comes with a comments_gformr function that was built with googleformr, allowing useRs to send comments to a Google Form I’ve created for collecting user feedback.

Not every useR has a github account for posting issues, nor do they run their own blog, nor do they have access to nearby useR groups. So finding new ways to stay accessible to my useRs is important to me.

Give it a try with something like below!

googleformr::comments_gformr(
        post_content = "It would useful for functionality to help distinguish in the data
                        between lots of comments from one useR vs. many useRs" )

Create your own comment function

You can create your own comments_pkg_name function by linking it to a Google Form using something along the lines of the code below:

  # create function
  form <- "your_google_form_url"
  comments_pkg_name <- googleformr::gformr(form
                                           , custom_reply = "Thanks for supporting pkg_name")
  

Note: it is recommended to call your comments function some clearly signalling a comment purpose but also something specific to your package. So a function name following the pattern comments_pkg_name should get the best of easy IntelliSense auto-complete and distinguishability from other packages using the same functionality

Once you rebuild your package and post it to github or CRAN, your useRs can send comments directly to you from the R console by simply putting their comments into your comments function.

  comments_pkg_name("useR comments")

Helper Functionality

You can test that your new comments_pkg_name function works by:

• sending a test message to your Google Form and see if it shows up and/or
• using the check_form_works function like so: check_form_works( comments_pkg_name("test") ). Either “All good” will appear or a specific http status message describing the error.

You can also extract Google Form question text or entry points using to make sure you can bring back the same information as is on your form:

# questions
form <- "your_google_form_url"
form %>% get_form() %>% get_form_questions()

# entry ids
form %>% get_form() %>% get_form_entry_ids()

Contact

You are welcome to: - send me a comment via googleformr::comments_gformr() - submit suggestions and bug-reports at: https://github.com/data-steve/googleformr/issues - send a pull request on: https://github.com/data-steve/googleformr/ - compose a friendly e-mail to: steven.troy.simpson@gmail.com