Pretty print package objects

[khusmann]

Thanks for all your work on this package! I really appreciate the simplicity & tidyverse principles. I hope you don't mind if I jump in!

Presently, printing loaded packages in the console simply dumps their list representation (which can span many pages in larger packages). I think it would be really nice for packages to have a pretty-printed summary by default instead. This is handy for interactive sessions, gives the package a really polished look, and I think it would help with adoption efforts by making things a little less intimidating for new users.

I'll submit a pull request in a sec with a candidate implementation...

[peterdesmet]

I agree! Makes me also wonder if we should move the console message one currently gets when using read_package() to the print function. The message is a bit annoying for packages relying on this package. Ping @damianooldoni.

[khusmann]

Makes me also wonder if we should move the console message one currently gets when using read_package() to the print function.

Oh, I like this idea! I definitely found the default loading message a little annoying for exactly that reason, and was planning to request an option to disable it. It feels a lot more natural in a print function.

[peterdesmet]

Question: how would a user get the default (non-pretty) print? This might especially be useful for developers building on top of frictionless. And what would the result be of:

str(example_package, list.len = 3)

[khusmann]

how would a user get the default (non-pretty) print?

Ah, good thought. As a user I would expect to do something like as.list(example_package) to remove the datapackage class. If you like that approach lmk and I can add.

> str(pkg, list.len=3)

List of 8
 $ name     : chr "example_package"
 $ id       : chr "115f49c1-8603-463e-a908-68de98327266"
 $ created  : chr "2021-03-02T17:22:33Z"
  [list output truncated]
 - attr(*, "class")= chr "datapackage"

[peterdesmet]

as.list() sounds like a good approach. @damianooldoni would you agree?

[peterdesmet]

This is now implemented in #184. The message() is removed from read_package(). To get the default print, unclass() is suggested, not as.list().