Build robust and maintainable software with object-oriented design patterns in R. Design patterns abstract and present in neat, well-defined components and interfaces the experience of many software designers and architects over many years of solving similar problems. These are solutions that have withstood the test of time with respect to re-usability, flexibility, and maintainability. R6P provides abstract base classes with examples for a few known design patterns. The patterns were selected by their applicability to analytic projects in R. Using these patterns in R projects have proven effective in dealing with the complexity that data-driven applications possess.

Working with complex, hierarchically nested JSON data in R can be a bit of a pain. In this post, I illustrate how you can convert JSON data into tidy tibbles with particular emphasis on what I’ve found to be a reasonably good, general approach for converting nested JSON into nested tibbles. I use three illustrative examples of increasing complexity to help highlight some pitfalls and build up the logic underlying the approach before applying it in the context of some real-world rock climbing competition data.

My lab investigates how blood pressure can be treated more effectively. Much of that work involves the painstaking development of new concepts and research methods to move forward the state of the art. For example, our work on urinary extracellular vesicles’ mRNA as an ex vivo assay of the ligand-activated transcription factor activity of mineralocorticoid receptors is challenging, fun, and rewarding. With a lot of work from Andrea Berrido and Pradeep Gunasekaran in my lab, we have been moving the ball forward on several key projects on that front.