Meta data storage in data.frames

[MansMeg]

Hi!

Im working with the pxweb R package and I have a problem that we seem to share, a standard on how to append meta data to R data.frame object.

I have been thinking of using an attribute, say "metadat" with a list with the metadata object. Have you given this problem any thoughts?

[hmalmedal]

I have thought about it, but I couldn't come up with a good solution. When printing a data frame, attributes are not shown, so it is not easy to discover them.

[MansMeg]

Thats true. But as a part of the rjsonstat package I guess one could create a new class that inherits from data.frame (maybe data.frame.meta) that only has a new print method for data.frames created by json-stat. I guess that should solve the problem?

[hmalmedal]

Perhaps. I'm not very familiar with creating new classes and methods.

[MansMeg]

I'm thinking of solutions for the pxweb package so I can try to implement something later on.