Find a database file name — find_file

This function will find the name of the detailed file from Storm Events Database for a specific year and specific type of file. This file name can then be used (in other functions) to download the data for a given year.

Usage

find_file_name(year = NULL, file_type = "details")

Arguments

year: A four-digit numeric or character string giving the year for which the user would like to download data.
file_type: A character string specifying the type of file you would like to pull. Choices include: "details" (the default), "fatalities", or "locations".

Details

This function creates a list of all file names available on https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/swdi/stormevents/csvfiles/ and then uses regular expressions to search that list for the name of the file for the year and type of file requested. While the files are named consistently, part of the name includes the date the file was last updated, which changes frequently. The method used here is robust to changes in this "last updated" date within the file names.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
find_file_name(year = 1999)
find_file_name(year = 2003, file_type = "fatalities")
}