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Comparison · Analytics
cleanepi vs GSODR
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cleanepi and GSODR — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
cleanepi vs GSODR: at a glance
What is cleanepi?
cleanepi is in the long tail of bug fixes that follows a 1.0 — and changed maintainers along the way.
cleanepi cleans and standardises epidemiological line list data — dates, subject IDs, missing values, duplicates — and produces a report of what it changed. Since 1.0.0 in mid-2024 the releases have been almost entirely corrective: date-guesser fixes, report structure fixes and matching behaviour corrections. Maintainership passed to Bubacarr Bah in 1.1.2.
What is GSODR?
A weather-station data client that broke one return type to hand back distances instead of bare IDs.
GSODR fetches and tidies NOAA Global Surface Summary of the Day weather data for R. The 4.0.0 release made nearest_stations() return a data.table of full station metadata plus distance in kilometres rather than a character vector of station IDs, with a documented one-liner for anyone who only wanted the IDs. Nothing has shipped since March 2024.
cleanepi vs GSODR: editorial side-by-side
cleanepi
0.0ANALYTICS
cleanepi is in the long tail of bug fixes that follows a 1.0 — and changed maintainers along the way.
◆ Current state
cleanepi cleans and standardises epidemiological line list data — dates, subject IDs, missing values, duplicates — and produces a report of what it changed. Since 1.0.0 in mid-2024 the releases have been almost entirely corrective: date-guesser fixes, report structure fixes and matching behaviour corrections. Maintainership passed to Bubacarr Bah in 1.1.2.
◆ Where it's heading
Work has concentrated on the report object and on making the cleaning functions behave predictably at the edges — case- and whitespace-insensitive missing-value matching, report elements returned as vectors instead of comma-separated strings, an argument to print a single operation's report. The underlying cleaning API has barely moved since 1.0.0, which suggests it is settled.
◆ Prediction
The report interface has been reworked repeatedly across these releases and is the most likely place for further change; the cleaning functions themselves look stable.
GSODR
0.0ANALYTICS
A weather-station data client that broke one return type to hand back distances instead of bare IDs.
◆ Current state
GSODR fetches and tidies NOAA Global Surface Summary of the Day weather data for R. The 4.0.0 release made nearest_stations() return a data.table of full station metadata plus distance in kilometres rather than a character vector of station IDs, with a documented one-liner for anyone who only wanted the IDs. Nothing has shipped since March 2024.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is mature and its releases read as upkeep: refreshing the internal ISD history database, dropping dependencies in favour of base and curl, and hardening the download path against station-year combinations that do not exist. The 4.0.0 change fits the same pattern of returning more structure by default rather than making callers query twice.
◆ Prediction
The most likely next release is another internal station-history refresh; there is no signal of new data sources or analysis features in these entries.
Alternatives to cleanepi and GSODR
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either cleanepi or GSODR.
sftime
The spatiotemporal companion to sf, moving at the pace of the packages around it.
ReLTER
An interface to Europe's long-term ecosystem research network that went quiet after 2.0.
waywiser
Spatial model assessment that spent the last year on cross-platform arithmetic and CRAN rules.
taxizedb
Stopped trusting the cloud to prepare its taxonomic databases and does the conversion locally.
fellingdater
Went from estimating felling dates to doing the crossdating that produces them.
See all cleanepi alternatives → · See all GSODR alternatives →
Recent activity from cleanepi and GSODR
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 9mo agocleanepiCase-insensitive missing-value matching and report fixes
- 1y agocleanepiReport elements become vectors; date parsing default restored
- 1y agocleanepiDate guesser corrected; empty-row indices fixed
- 2y agocleanepiFirst major release with cleaning and reporting
- 2y agoGSODRnearest_stations() returns metadata and distances
- 2y agoGSODRStation history refresh and internal tidying
- 2y agoGSODRBad station-year requests warn instead of failing the batch
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cleanepi and GSODR?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. cleanepi and GSODR are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is cleanepi better than GSODR?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cleanepi and GSODR are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to cleanepi?
Top cleanepi alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cleanepi alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cleanepi for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to GSODR?
Top GSODR alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "GSODR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gsodr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.