Changelog • pins

pins (development version)

Support new preview_data parameter for pin previews on Posit Connect (#850).
Fixed a bug in how pin_upload() handles pin names (#852).
Improved documentation for S3-compatible object storage (#853).

pins 1.4.0

CRAN release: 2024-10-07

Lifecycle changes

Changed the function signature of pin_upload() to be consistent with pin_write() i.e. arguments like tags must be passed by name and not position (#809).
Started gradual deprecation process for legacy pins functions such as pin() (#844).

Other improvements

Added example Python code to pin previews for Posit Connect (#806).
Fixed a bug in how pins with the same name but different owners on Posit Connect were identified (#808).
Fixed a bug in handling folders with duplicate names for Google Drive (#819, @UchidaMizuki).
Fixed how previously deleted pin versions are detected (#838, @MichalLauer).
Added new board for Databricks Volumes board_databricks() (#839, @edgararuiz).
Switched writing with type = "parquet" to use the nanoparquet package (#843).

pins 1.3.0

CRAN release: 2023-11-09

Breaking changes

Changed the function signature of pin_write() so arguments like type and title must be passed by name and not position (#792).

Other improvements

Removed content and user caches for Connect altogether. Now, we look up usernames and content on the Connect server every time (#793).
Added new urls item to metadata for a pin (#795).

pins 1.2.2

CRAN release: 2023-09-09

Fixed how dots are checked in pin_write() to make user-facing messages more clear (#770).
Improved documentation about Connect caches (#771) and deleting pin versions (#773).
Added board_deparse for board_url() (#774).
Fixed how board_gdrive() handles dribble objects (#780, @gorkang and #782).

pins 1.2.1

CRAN release: 2023-08-16

New environment variable PINS_CACHE_DIR controls the location of the default cache path (#748).
Added new board for Google Drive board_gdrive() (#749).
Updated test for new arrow release (#764).

pins 1.2.0

CRAN release: 2023-05-18

Breaking changes

pin_write() no longer writes identical pin contents by default, and gains a force_identical_write argument for writing even when the pin contents are identical to the last version (#735).

Other improvements

The print method for boards no longer calls pin_list() internally (#718).
board_s3() now uses pagination for listing and versioning (#719, @mzorko).
Added type = "parquet" to read and write Parquet files (#729).
Updated error messages and type checking (#731) along with testing strategy (#724).
Added new check for whether a new version is the same as the previous version, as can happen when writing pin versions very quickly (#727).
Added new headers argument for board_url(), mostly for authentication, as well as new board for Connect vanity URLs board_connect_url() (#732).
Fixed bug in cache_prune() to correctly find caches for board_url() (#734).

pins 1.1.0

CRAN release: 2023-01-21

Breaking changes

Change the function board_rsconnect() to board_connect(), following RStudio’s rebranding to Posit (#689).
Changed type = "csv" to use R’s default value for stringsAsFactors i.e. FALSE (#664).
Functions for viewing legacy API pins in the RStudio Viewer pane are now deprecated (when possible) or removed (#679).
The functions for accessing Kaggle resource as pins are no longer supported. We recommend you use the Kaggle CLI instead (#698).

Other improvements

Added vignettes describing how to manage custom formats and web-based boards (#631, #685, @ijlyttle).
Added new board for Google Cloud Storage board_gcs() (#695).
Added new tags item to metadata for a pin (#677).
Improved error message for pin_versions() (#657).
Switched content and user caches for Connect to use environments instead of files on disk. This means caches will no longer persist between sessions but will be much less likely to end up in a broken state (#667).
Added write_board_manifest() to write a manifest file _pins.yaml recording all pins and their versions to the board’s root directory. This function only works for boards that are not read-only (#661, based on work of @ijlyttle).
Updated board_url() to handle versions recorded via a manifest file (#681, based on work of @ijlyttle).
Updated code preview on Posit Connect (#690).

pins 1.0.3

CRAN release: 2022-09-24

The arrow package is now suggested, rather than imported (#644, @jonthegeek).
Fixed how Connect usernames are handled in messages, preview, etc (#643).
Increased datetime precision to the second, for pin_versions() and related functions (#642, @tomsing1).
Pass the dots from pin_write() through to s3_upload_file() and s3_uploade_yaml() to support S3 tagging, encryption options, etc for pins (#648, #652, @fh-mthomson).

pins 1.0.2

CRAN release: 2022-08-23

board_rsconnect() now correctly finds the created date for pins (#623, @bjfletcher).
pin_upload() now better handles path expansion (#585, @sellorm).
The pin_reactive_*() functions now use the hash (rather than the created date) for polling (#595, @thomaszwagerman).

pins 1.0.1

CRAN release: 2021-12-15

board_azure() now allows you to set a path so that multiple boards can share the same container (#528, @hongooi73).
board_deparse() is more likely to generate runnable code when used with board_rsconnect() (#553).
legazy_azure() works once again (#527).
legacy_github() works once again (#549).
pin_meta() now includes pin name (#544).
board_register() works better when called directly, due to standardisation of cache paths all computation (#529).
Drop add-ins since they’re not tested or documented (#525)

pins 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2021-10-02

pins 1.0.0 includes a new, more explicit, API that includes robust support for versioning. In the modern API, you create a board object which is passed to every pin_ function instead of “registering” a board that is later refereed to with a string. This leads to code like this:

board <- board_local()
board %>% pin_write(mtcars, "mtcars")
board %>% pin_read("mtcars")

The legacy API (pin(), pin_get(), and board_register()) will continue to work, but new features will only be implemented with the new API, so we encourage you to switch to the modern API as quickly as possible. Learn more in vignette("pins-update").

Modern pin functions

pin_read() and pin_write() replace most uses of pin_get() and pin(). pin_write() has a type argument that allows you to choose how to serialise your R objects to disk, allowing you to manage the tradeoffs between speed, generality, and language inter-op, and a metadata argument that allows you to store arbitrary metadata (#430).
pin_download() and pin_upload() are lower-level versions of pin_read() and pin_write() that work with file paths rather than R objects. They replace the use of pin() with a path and eliminate the type-instability in pin_get(), which can return either an R object or a character vector of paths.
pin_browse() replaces board_browse(), and takes you to a specific pin, either the original source on the internet, or the cached version on your local file system (#435).
pin_delete() replaces pin_remove(), and can delete multiple pins (#433).
pin_list() lists all pins in a board.
pin_meta() replaces pin_info() and retrieves pin metadata (#418).
pin_search() replaces pin_find(). It is much more limited because the previous version was based on assumptions that are not true for many boards.
pin_reactive_read() and pin_reactive_download() replace pin_reactive().
pin_exists() reports whether or not a pin exists.
pin_version_delete() allows you to delete a single version. pin_versions_prune() (#459) allows you to easily prune old versions keeping either a specified number of versions, or all versions beneath a certain age.

Modern boards

This version includes the following modern boards:

board_azure() stores data in Azure’s blob storage. It is built on top of AzureStor (#474).
board_folder() is a generalised replacement for the legacy local board. board_folder() can store data in any directory, making it possible to share boards using shared network drives or on dropbox or similar. If you using pins casually and don’t want to pick a directory, board_local() is a variant of board_folder() that stores data in a system data directory.
board_kaggle_dataset() and board_kaggle_competition() allow you to download data from Kaggle. The data is automatically cached so that it’s only downloaded when it changes.
board_ms365() allow to pin data to MS One Drive and Sharpoint (#498, @hongooi73).
board_rsconnect() shares data on RStudio connect. This board supports both modern and legacy APIs, so that you and your colleagues can use a mixture of pins versions as you transition to pins 1.0.0. Note that the compatibility is one directional: you can pin_read() pins created by pin(), but you can’t pin_get() pins created by pin_write().
board_s3() stores data in Amazon’s S3 service. It is built on top of paws.
board_url() lets you create a manual board from a vector of URLs. This is useful because pin_download() and pin_read() are cached, so they only re-download the data if it has changed since the last time you used it (#409). This board is a replacement for pin()’s ability to work directly with URLs

The legacy boards will continue to work with the legacy pins API; we will implement modern versions of the remaining legacy boards based on user feedback.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

All board objects now have class beginning with pins_board_ and also inherit from common superclass pins_board.
Pins no longer works with the connections pane. This automatically registered code tended to be either dangerous (because it’s easy to accidentally leak credentials) or useless (because it relied on variables that the connection pane doesn’t capture).
Pinned data frames are longer converted to tibbles.
The “packages” board is no longer registered by default; if you want to use this you’ll need to register with board_register("packages"). It has been radically simplified so that it will no longer download packages, and it pin_find() now searches all packages that you have installed, rather than a stale snapshot of data in CRAN packages. The CRAN files dataset has been removed from the package.
board_browse() now works with local boards.
board_rsconnect() will automatically connect to the current RSC pin board when run inside RSC itself (assuming you have version 1.8.8 or later) (#396).
cache_browse(), cache_info(), and cache_prune() provide some basic tooling around the local pins cache maintained by pins (#438).
pin_fetch() has been removed
option(pins.invisible) is now defunct and ignored.
You can no longer switch from a versioned pin to an unversioned pin without first deleting the pin (#410).

pins 0.4.5

CRAN release: 2021-01-05

Pins

Support downloading remote files when service returns incompatible data.txt file (#310).
Support for pins over 100MB in Windows systems (#313).
Avoid Windows crashing in pin() under some locales (#127).

Boards

Silenced ‘no encoding supplied’ warning (#330).

Local

pin_find() no longer searches text with an undocumented regular expression syntax (#270).

S3

Default to using HTTPS in S3 boards (#304).
Support for AWS V4 signatures when registering S3 boards with region parameter (#304)

Cloud

Support for path to register a board under a subpath for Azure, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud and S3 boards (#200).
Avoid creating pins named with unsupported characters for Azure, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud and S3 boards (#193).

GitHub

Properly store relative paths when path parameter is specified in GitHub boards (#199).
Add support for repos with a ‘main’ branch as default (#336).
Add support for large file in private repo releases (#292).
When a board is registered with versions = FALSE, GitHub tags are also delete when large files are present (#285).

RStudio Connect

Invalid ‘account’ or ‘server’ parameters show proper errors (#296).
Increase total entries retrieved with pin_find(), configurable with pins.search.count (#296).
Fix regression introduced in pins 0.4.2 (#253) preventing users from collaborating on existing pins they have access to (#302).
Avoid deleting pin when upload fails to avoid deleting versions (#306).
Support re-creating pins from pins not previously properly updated (#308).
Adjust pin preview to only display 1K rows instead of 10K (#315).
Avoid changing columns names on data frame preview (#190).
Improve error message when token authentication fails (#327).

pins 0.4.4

CRAN release: 2020-10-30

Pins

For files bigger than 100MB pin() creates symlinks to speed up uploads, can be configured using the pins.link.size option (#273).
When using pin(zip = TRUE) the zip no longer contains local patahs (#277).

Google Cloud

Disable caching on data.txt to support creating multiple pins at once (#275).

RStudio

Prevent connections pane from hanging when multiple pins are updated at once (#280).

Website

Support for pin_get(download = FALSE) to avoid checking for updates.

RStudio Connect

Support for servers with mismatched http vs https protocols.
Make use of RSCONNECT_TAR when running a report inside RStudio Connect (#293).

pins 0.4.3

CRAN release: 2020-07-10

Boards

Properly export board_pin_versions to allow custom boards extending versions (#265).

Website

Fix regression creating pins when using a brand new cloud board (#268).

pins 0.4.2

CRAN release: 2020-07-05

Website

Fix issue removing pins with custom domain names from cloud boards (#234).
Fix warning when using pin() against storage locations with custom domain name (#237).
Fix issue where datatxt was not refreshing deleted entries (#239).

RStudio Connect

Support for versions = FALSE in board_register() to avoid using too much space when creating pins (#245).
Prevent administrators from overriding pins they don’t own, unless the pin is specified as user/name (#253).
Support to connect to servers that have a redirect configured when the full server URL is not specified in board_register() (#256).
Throw error when multiple accounts are associated to the same server (#261).

pins 0.4.1

CRAN release: 2020-05-28

When running in production environments (which usually set the R_CONFIG_ACTIVE environment variable), avoid using shared caches.
Fix pin() failing to update cache when server returns NULL etag.
Support for custom_metadata in pin() to allow saving custom fields in data.txt file.
Improve performannce for pin() from URLs containing large files that are already been cached prerviously by pin() (#225).
Avoid showing upload or download progress when creating R Markdown documents and other non-interactive use cases (#227).
When pin(url) fails and local cache exists, produce warning and retrieve cached version (#231).
Support for pin(zip = TRUE) to create a zip file of the given path before creating the pin (#232).

RStudio Connect

Fix when overriding pin with corrupt metadata.
Avoid using shared caches when running inside RStudio Connect.
Fixed ‘invalid uid’ warning when creaating pin undner some Linux servers (#263).

Kaggle

Support to find and download competition datasets.

pins 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2020-04-07

Support for versioning in all boards.
Support for DigitalOcean board.

Finding pins with pin_find() sort results by default (#201).
Avoid incomplete final line found warning error wheen reading manifests.
Support for using pin() across multiple concurrent processes (#182).
Support in pin_get() to download arbitrary files from cloud boards like Azure, DigitalOcean, GitHub, Google Cloud, RStudio Connect, and S3.
Fix issue where http HEAD requests could tgimeout and prevent pin from downloading in very slow connections.

RStudio

Support access_type parameter for RStudio Connect.
pin() now refreshes the connections pane.
pin_remove() now refreshes the connections pane.

RStudio Connect

Support for code parameter in pin() to customize R code used in the UI to retrieve the pin (#77).
Improve error message for pin_get() with duplicate names (#171).
Fix board register error when using URL with ports (#195).
Enable retrieving public pins without authentication (#83).

GitHub

Support for versions = FALSE in board_register() to also delete release files when pin is removed (#91).
Support for versions = FALSE in board_register() to avoid creating versioned GitHub releases (#197).
Support for committing all github files with a single commit (#197).
Support for custom GitHub hosts including GitHub Enterprise using the host parameter in board_register_github() (#163).

Websites

Using pin() now searches for data.txt files in URLs when the URL contains no file extension, behavior can be turnned off with the pins.search.datatxt option.

pins 0.3.2

CRAN release: 2020-02-06

Pins

pin_info() adds support for metadata parameter to avoid retrieving pin contents.

S3

Added support for host parameter to configure “s3.amazonaws.com” to custom locations.

GitHub

Fix regression uploading large datasets as release files.

pins 0.3.1

CRAN release: 2020-01-10

Pins

pin_info() prints long character strings in their own line.
Fixed issue in pin_remove() for S3, Azure, GCloud, Google and website boards (#138).
Fixed issue when pinning complex data frames with nested lists (#142).

Azure

Added missing key parameter in board_register_azure().

RStudio

Fixed connection suggested code when caused by pin_find() (#137).
Fixed connection launcher for Azure connections.

RStudio Connect

Fix issue uploading large pins causing is.character(type) is not TRUE error.
Fix issue affecting boards registered with trailing slash (#151).
Improve error messages when a pin fails to be created (#149).
Added support for CONNECT_API_KEY and CONNECT_SERVER in place of RSCONNECT_API and RSCONNECT_SERVER, which they are still supported for backwards-compatibility.

pins 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2019-11-26

Support for Azure board.
Support for Google Cloud board.
Support for S3 board.

Pins

pin() extracts URLs that end in .gz and zip, which can be disabled with pin("<url>", extract = FALSE).
pin() no longer prints the pin, you can revert this behavior with options(pins.invisible = FALSE) (#122).
Show upload progress for files larger than 10mb.
Avoid changing data.table when using pin() and get_pin().
Support for pin_info() to describe a pin and extended = TRUE in pin_find() to show all extended information about each pin.
Support for extract parameter in pin_get(), pin(), and pin_reactive() to override default file extraction behavior.
Support to extract gzip files when the R.utils package is installed.
Show download progress for files larger than 10mb.
Support for I() to force a pin to be created without additional overhead of exporting CSV and other enhancements (#73).
Support creating automatic name when using pin() and multiple URL.

Boards

Avoid “cannot create dir” warning in systems with an empty cache folder.

RStudio

Gracefully handle errors when a pin’s preview can’t be created.
Website boards now support the browse menu item in the connection.
Fix data frames previewing character columns with special characters.
Fix connection code when a board is registered automatically.

RStudio Connect

Fix issue where pin_find() would not show all available pins.
Fix issue where RStudio Connections pane would not show all pins.
Store all downloaded content under user subfolder insited rsconnect cache.
Removed pin_find() workaround for beta rsconnect server where searching was causing timeout.
Fix for RStudio Connect servers where /content/ is not used in content URLs.
Fix issue expanding pins columns in RStudio for pins with similar names in RStudio Connect boards.
Fix issue removing pins with similar names in RStudio Connect boards.

Python

Support for Python 3.

Websites

The name parameter in board_register_datatxt() is now optional.
Fix in pin_find() to properly search desecription files.

GitHub

Various fixes for GitHub boards using the path parameter when registering the board (#121).

pins 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2019-10-01

RStudio Connect

Support for retrieving pins shared by others in RStudio Connect boards.
Support for RStudio Connect servers running under a subpath in the server.
Add support for RSCONNECT_SERVER environment variable to ease configuration of automated RStudio Connect reports.
Fix intermittent failure to retrieve pins from RStudio Connect boards while creating them.
Fix in RStudio Connect boards to retrieve pins that match other pin names (#45).
Fix for data frames with nested data frames in rsconnect boards (#36).

GitHub

board_register_github() now checks for the repo to exist (#63).
Adjusted max upload file to 25mb to avoid “server error” in the API, larger files than 25mb uploaded as release files. This can be configured using the pins.github.release option, which deefaults to 25.
Allow overriding GitHub pin over a pin that partially failed to be created.

Boards

Using a board will attempt to automatically register, such that pin(iris, board = "rsconnect") would work for the default configuration even when the board is not explicitly registered (#50).
Registers “local” board by default, you no longer need to explicitly run board_register_local() (#56).
Make use of the rappdirs package to define the default cache path, replaces ~/.pins. Use board_cache_path() to retrieve default cache path.

Websites

Fix for data.txt boards created from GitHub boards using large files.

pins 0.1.2

CRAN release: 2019-09-04

Support to upload files larger than 50mb in GitHub boards as release files.

pins 0.1.1

CRAN release: 2019-08-30

Fix CRAN request to explicitly opt-in to use local home path as cache by running board_register_local().
Fix error when retrieving pins from Kaggle boards (#31).
Support for large files in GitHub board (#30).

pins 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2019-08-28

Support for local board.
Support for Kaggle board.
Support for packages board.
Support for RStudio Connect board.
Support for GitHub board.
Support for website board.