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Generate a CITATION.cff file

Source: R/generate-citation.R
generate_citation.Rd

Writes a Citation File Format (CITATION.cff) skeleton, optionally pre-filled with author information from a profile written by generate_profile(), so a project's citation metadata doesn't mean retyping the same name, affiliation, and ORCID a third time.

Usage

generate_citation(
  filename = "CITATION.cff",
  path = ".",
  profile = NULL,
  overwrite = FALSE
)

Arguments

filename

Character. Name of the file to write. Defaults to "CITATION.cff", the name tools that read this format expect; changing it means those tools will not find the file automatically.

path

Character. Directory to write the file into. Defaults to "." (the current working directory), matching the rest of the family's project-scaffolding functions.

profile

Character or NULL. Path to a profile file, typically one written by generate_profile(). When supplied, every entry in the profile's author: block becomes an author entry in the generated file. When NULL (the default), a single generic placeholder author is written instead.

overwrite

Logical. When FALSE (default), an existing file at the destination is an error rather than being replaced.

Value

The path to the written file, invisibly.

Details

title, version, repository-code, url, and license are project facts a personal profile has no way to know, so they are left as placeholders (some commented out) regardless of profile. date-released is filled in with today's date, since that much is always knowable at generation time; edit it later if the actual release date differs.

The given-names/family-names split needed by the Citation File Format is done by splitting a profile's single name field on its last space, which is right for the ordinary case and wrong for some real names. Review the generated file's given-names/family-names fields before relying on them, especially for a multi-word family name.

See also

generate_profile(), the function that writes the file this one can read from.

Examples

# \donttest{
generate_citation(path = tempdir())
#> ✔ Wrote /tmp/RtmpLziJOC/CITATION.cff.
#> ℹ Wrote a placeholder author -- edit /tmp/RtmpLziJOC/CITATION.cff directly, or
#>   supply `profile`.
#> ℹ Fill in title and, when they're true of this project, the commented-out
#>   fields.

profile_file <- tempfile(fileext = ".yml")
writeLines(
  paste(
    'author:',
    '  - name: "Erwin Lares"',
    '    affiliation: "RCI, UW-Madison"',
    '    orcid: "0000-0002-3284-828X"',
    sep = "\n"
  ),
  profile_file
)
generate_citation(path = tempdir(), profile = profile_file, overwrite = TRUE)
#> ✔ Wrote /tmp/RtmpLziJOC/CITATION.cff.
#> ℹ Author information came from /tmp/RtmpLziJOC/file1af63161e3d1.yml --
#>   double-check the given-names/family-names split.
#> ℹ Fill in title and, when they're true of this project, the commented-out
#>   fields.
# }