Unable to pass column names to `tidygeocoder::geocode()` with wrapper function

[elipousson]

I'm not sure whether this is a bug report or feature request but, given the way tidygeocoder::geocode() handles the evaluation of argument names, I can't figure out how to pass a variable. If there is a way to do this with rlang that doesn't require changes to tidygeocoder, I'd welcome any advice you can share. If not, I'd love to see an option that allows tidygeocoder::geocode() to work with this type of wrapper function.

tbl <- tibble::as_tibble(
  data.frame(
    "Addr" = "1 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201"
  )
)

test_geocode <- function(.tbl, address, ...) {
  tidygeocoder::geocode(
    .tbl = .tbl,
    address = address,
    ...
  )
}

test_geocode(tbl, "Addr")
#> Error: "address" is not a column name in the input dataset.

^{Created on 2023-05-01 with reprex v2.0.2}

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 [1] /Users/elipousson/Library/R/arm64/4.2/library
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[jessecambon]

Hi @elipousson, there might be a more elegant solution than this but if you are OK using named arguments then this works for me:

tbl <- tibble::as_tibble(
  data.frame(
    "Addr" = "1 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201"
  )
)

test_geocode <- function(.tbl, ...) {
  tidygeocoder::geocode(
    .tbl = .tbl,
    ...
  )
}

test_geocode(tbl, address="Addr")
#> Passing 1 address to the Nominatim single address geocoder
#> Query completed in: 1 seconds
#> # A tibble: 1 × 3
#>   Addr                                   lat  long
#>   <chr>                                <dbl> <dbl>
#> 1 1 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201  39.3 -76.6

^{Created on 2023-05-01 with reprex v2.0.2}

I'd have to do a little more digging to figure out why your original code is behaving that way, but I suspect it has to do with how the arguments are processed in geocode(). There's some logic here that allows the address argument to be passed in either quoted or unquoted form (ie. address = "colname" and address = colname both work):

tidygeocoder/R/geocode.R

Line 90 in bd51794

if (!is.null(substitute(address))) address <- rm_quote(deparse(substitute(address)))

[elipousson]

I think the issue is the way that substitute() is dependent on the local environment. For example, running the helper function with withr::local_environment() gets the code to pass the initial check for column names – although it returns a different error for unknown reasons. I forked tidygeocoder to explore possible alternatives and tried out a tidyselect-based helper but it alerted me that tidyselect no longer supports character strings for column selection (potentially due to this kind of quirky issue). There is more information in this tidyselect vignette if you're curious.

tbl <- tibble::as_tibble(
  data.frame(
    "Addr" = "1 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201"
  )
)

test_geocode <- function(.tbl, ...) {
  withr::local_environment(
    parent.frame(),
    tidygeocoder::geocode(
      .tbl = .tbl,
      ...,
      
    )
  )
}

test_geocode(tbl, "Addr")
#> Passing 1 address to the Nominatim single address geocoder
#> Query completed in: 1 seconds
#> Error in if (pos == 1L) stop("'pos=1' is not possible and has been warned about for years"): the condition has length > 1

^{Created on 2023-05-01 with reprex v2.0.2}