Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

cancensus 0.6.0

Performance Improvements

• Significant performance improvements to census vector hierarchy traversal functions
  • parent_census_vectors() is now 1.9x faster (92% speedup) by caching the full vector list once instead of repeated lookups
  • child_census_vectors() is now 1.2x faster (23% speedup) with same optimization
  • Replaced O(n²) rbind operations in loops with efficient list accumulation
  • Deep hierarchies (8+ levels) see the most improvement
• Faster semantic search in find_census_vectors()
  • N-gram generation is now 1.4x faster (30-40% speedup)
  • Optimized text processing with pre-allocated vectors
  • Better performance for all query types and lengths

Testing & Quality

• Added comprehensive test suite with 43 unit tests
• New tests/testthat/ directory structure
• All optimizations maintain 100% backward compatibility
• No breaking changes to any function signatures or behavior
• Added microbenchmark and testthat to Suggests

New features

• Convenience function to visualize vector hierarchy (visualize_vector_hierarchy())

Various small improvements

• Improvements in warnings and messages
• Removal of stale code
• Download progress reporting and retry logic for robustness against network issues

cancensus 0.5.10

CRAN release: 2025-11-05

• ensure that cancensus won’t trigger CRAN check errors if StatCan servers are down
• replace shorthand function with regular function definition to address CRAN note

cancensus 0.5.8

• clarify installing API key and cache path in “getting started” vignette
• fix caching problem with get_statcan_wds_data
• support health region level census data for 2021 via WDS
• support download of dissemination block geographies from StatCan

cancensus 0.5.7

CRAN release: 2024-02-10

• fix issue with path names not quoted properly when downoading and unpacking geosuite data
• support versions in WDS data, in paricular for federal electoral districts

cancensus 0.5.6

CRAN release: 2023-10-04

• fix issue when using named vectors to query data for non-existent geographies, return NULL in this case instead of throwing error
• fix problem with population centre geographic data download
• support newly released Forward Sortation Area geography for statcan geography and WDS functionality
• remove instances of new native R pipe |> with dplyr pipe %>% to preserve compatibility with older R versions

cancensus 0.5.5

CRAN release: 2023-01-23

• add functionality for direct access to StatCan census WDS for 2021
• add functionality to download original StatCan geographies for 2021
• update CODES_TABLE for 2021 census

cancensus 0.5.4

CRAN release: 2022-11-07

• added ability to query census datasets by year
• added a convenience function for creating unique names within given selection of regions from list_census_regions()
• added a check and context menu to install sf package when user requests spatial data but does not have the required package installed as opposed to erroring out.
• improved checking that correct spatial formats are requested
• preparing for ‘sp’ spatial format usage deprecation in future versions

cancensus 0.5.3

CRAN release: 2022-08-25

• Added a check and context menu to install sf package when user requests spatial data but does not have the required package installed as opposed to stopping with an error.
• fixes a bug in the local data recall check

cancensus 0.5.2

CRAN release: 2022-08-19

• resolved broken and relocated links picked up in CRAN pretesting

cancensus 0.5.1

• Added functionality for users to detect and remove locally cached data that has been recalled by Statistics Canada
• added a check on initial get_census call that produces a warning if locally cached data has been recalled by Statistics Canada
• added option to retrieve higher-resolution geometries in get_census

Minor changes

• renamed get/set cache/api_key functions to avoid name conflicts with related packages

cancensus 0.5.0

CRAN release: 2022-02-08

Minor changes

• Added cache metadata
• overview information on cached data
• allow selective removing of cached data

cancensus 0.4.3

CRAN release: 2021-06-08

Minor changes

• Fixed a problem with sf compatibility and agr attribute
• Fixed a problem with querying geographic data for multiple geographic levels

cancensus 0.4.2

CRAN release: 2021-02-09

Minor changes

• Fixed a minor problem where cache path wasn’t always picked up
• Added optional argument keep_parent when calling child_census_vectors() that retains the input parent variable in the list of result. We found that in many cases user would follow up a call to child_census_vectors() with a bind_rows(...) to do this, so this should save a step.

cancensus 0.4.1

CRAN release: 2021-01-27

Minor changes

• Fixed minor problem where API key wasn’t always picked up if not set correctly as environment variable.
• Fixed warning when t column not present in downloaded data.

cancensus 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2021-01-16

Major changes

• Added get_intersecting_geometry function to take advantage of new Censusmapper API endpoint. Check out the new vignette detailing how to use it.

Minor changes

• Slightly reworked how to configure and store user API keys and cache locations. New functions set_api_key, set_cache_path, show_api_key, and show_cache_path added.
• Fixes various warnings due to recent changes in tibble and dplyr.

cancensus 0.3.2

CRAN release: 2020-07-16

Major changes

• Support for 1996 census
• Public availability of dissemination block area level data

Minor changes

• Fixes bug in find_census_vectors()

cancensus 0.3.1

CRAN release: 2020-06-23

Minor changes

• CRAN check issues

cancensus 0.3.0

Major changes

• Fully redesigned variable search using find_census_vectors() and deprecation of `search_census_vectors(). See the Data discovery: resources for finding available and relevant data vignette for additional information.
• Census Agglomerations with defined geographies and Census tracts are separated from CMAs when calling list_census_regions()
• Additional metadata for catalogue information and attribution is returned when calling list_census_datasets()
• New functions explore_census_regions and explore_census_vectors which open a browser page towards the interactive discovery and selection tools on the Censusmapper website
• New function attribution_for_dataset which provides accurate attribution information for citation and visualizations for a given dataset.
• Additional datasets: T1FF taxfiler data and dwelling type crosstabs, made available by CMHC. For more info, see the new vignettes for these datasets: Additional datasets: Structural type of dwelling by document type, Additional datasets: Annual T1FF taxfiler data.
• get_census_geometry() is now hard-deprecated and will stop the program flow. Use get_census() instead.

Minor changes

• Updated internal usage of dependent packages to avoid deprecated functions and warnings
• Additional minor fixes to efficiency improvements

cancensus 0.2.2

CRAN release: 2020-05-12

Minor changes

• More efficient conversion between sp and sf spatial objects
• Fixes issue occasionally reported when reading large GeoJSON objects as noted in https://github.com/mountainMath/cancensus/issues/138
• Adds geojsonsf dependency
• Replaces soft deprecated dplyr functions to fix https://github.com/mountainMath/cancensus/issues/137

cancensus 0.2.1

CRAN release: 2020-03-05

Minor changes

• Minor documentation improvements
• Allow for search by vector identifier
• Allow child and parent vector retrieval by vector identifier
• Add functionality for future tax data releases

cancensus 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2019-07-28

Major changes

• Added a max_leaves_option for the search_census_vectors function. Adds functionality to set maximum depth for child census vectors, i.e. max_level=NA as an additional parameter. Then e.g. max_level=1 would only get direct children and no grandchildren.
• Resolved issues with mislabeled CD UID for CSD level data
• Improve reliability of character/numeric alignments for geographic UIDS
• get_census_geography is now soft deprecated and rolled into the standard get_census with parameters

Minor changes

• Minor documentation improvements
• Soften dependency on readr package
• Allow for search of internal CensusMapper variables

cancensus 0.1.8

CRAN release: 2018-11-20

Major changes

• Remove dependency on development versions of sf and ggplot2 packages
• Add feature allowing for named vector retrieval

Minor Changes

• Vignette updates
• Calls that retrieve only geography will now return geographic hierarchy information as well
• Small tweaks that make it easier to do 2011-2016 intra-census comparisons

Bug fixes

• Fix labels when geo format is sf
• Remove some unnecessary code for geographic hierarchies

cancensus 0.1.7

CRAN release: 2018-02-04

Major changes

• Set default caching to tempdir()
• Encourage users to set up local persistent caching using options(cancensus.cache_path = 'XXX')

cancensus 0.1.6

CRAN release: 2018-01-24

Major changes

• First released on CRAN

Minor changes

• Ensured that data frames were sf-class data frames if option sf was selected for spatial data.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where read.csv was incorrectly loading text data if readr::read_csv was not available

cancensus 0.1.5

Major changes

• Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.
• Added pkgdown documentation
• New vignettes - cancensus and Making maps with cancensus

Minor changes

• Default behaviour for list_census_vectors() changed to have quiet = TRUE

cancensus 0.1.0

Major changes

• Added vector and geography search and discovery capabilities
• Improved performance
• Error and API issue messaging

Minor changes

• Reduced package dependencies

cancensus 0.0.1

Major changes

• Initial release