I am mainly interested in the "Boards" created using any of the board_ variants from the pins package. When you do so, I don't "see" a board (or at least a folder representing a board, maybe like how a .git folder would contain all the commit hashes for a project). Even when you toggle hidden folders in the View tab you don't see anything. Are Boards effectively generated temporarily for a given session (Not referring to board_temp here)?
Through the testing i've done so far, I can create a board in my session and then generate Pins which you do see the folders for (versioned or not). The main impetus of my interest is how do you know a board exists within a given directory? Even if there are folders with the name of your pins, how do you distinguish that as a "Board" vs some random directory with some sub-folders?
And this relates to how you access a board you generated previously:
Create a board for a given data source I want to track over time
Do work with it in session 1
Close that session
Open session 2 where I want to add a new version of that previous pin
Is there an actual "Board" I am accessing for my pin?
In real-life, you’d pick a board depending on how you want to share the data. Here are a few options:
board <- board_local() # share data across R sessions on the same computer
board <- board_folder("~/Dropbox") # share data with others using dropbox
board <- board_folder("Z:\\my-team\pins") # share data using a shared network drive
board <- board_connect() # share data with Posit Connect
Hey @technocrat, thank you for replying. I understand the use cases, but I am more interested in some of the more technical details.
As mentioned in my post, you have folders for the "pins" you create. But when you instantiate a board, you don't have a "physical" thing like a folder that you see that tells you that a board exists. It seems like the boards are generated within a session but don't persist after you close out. You can clearly generate a board where those pins are, but my confusion is how you know that the directory where your pins are stored is a "board".
Say I created a board and then a pin for a data file I wanted to track over time. I can use any of the board_ variants and then create my pins. I get the folders for those pins. All good. But what if I step away for a few weeks or months and need to determine that a directory was previously used as my board? Is it just a matter of opening the directory, looking inside the pin folder and seeing the hashes?
I am more interested in using board_folder to set up a centralized place where other individuals could access the pinned data.
The buried <- board$path portion intrigues me. I'd be interested in creating a mini package to wrap some of this functionality so any other collaborator could download the package and use whatever wrappers I create to provide their data updates.
Basically, I'd like to ship the package with the buried path as some sort of default that the user can't alter. It's effectively their only option. I'd allow any number of pins to be written, but the whole point would to ensure that our "board" persists irrespective of which machine is being used. I understand that this is where board_connect would be a much better solution, but our organization doesn't have a subscription at this time (hopefully soon though).
I'm still toying with the package when time permits, but other example workflows would be nice to see.