Guide to function argument changes in Version 0.2.0

Along side the new functionality in the v0.2.0 update, there have been a lot of changes made to existing {ggshakeR} functions as well. This is regarding the consistency and standardization of argument names in the package.

For guides on new functions please see:

• Guide to Pitch Plots
• Guide to Creating Pizza Plots
• Guide to Expected Threat

library(ggshakeR)

The problem that really kicked off these changes was the fact that as I was looking through the package’s code base, I found that we had functions with arguments using snake_case in some functions, others using camelCase, and worst of all some functions that used both snake_case AND camelCase in the argument names.

plot_passflow(pass_data, dataType, bin_size) # !!!   (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

After some discussion with the other authors (Abhishek & Harsh), I have standardized everything to snake_case as well as making a number of other changes to argument names for the sake of consistency. This does mean some pain in the short-term, but please do know these changes are done with user experience in mind in the long-term by lessening the cognitive load for using the functions in the package. Some argument names are longer now, but this shouldn’t be an issue as in RStudio you can simply press Tab while typing to auto-complete longer argument names (other modern IDEs should have a similar feature as well). An exception (hopefully a rare one as we go forward) is binwidth as this is essentially an argument that is being passed on to some underlying ggplot2 function calls and we wanted to preserve the same argument name for familiarity’s sake.

The type arguments have also been rejigged so that the first type argument will always be the type related to the function. So for example each plot_*() function’s type argument will specify the plot type, then other arguments for the type of other things will have their own prefix such as data_type and so on. Another QOL change was to make the data argument be standardized across all functions so you don’t have to figure out whether it’s event_data or pass_data or sonarData or even simply data… it’s all just data now.

Some arguments have changed their order in the functions, to learn about why function order is important, check out Function arguments section in ‘Advanced R’. The functions in {ggshakeR} follows R function conventions by having the data argument come first, then usually a type argument, then the rest in an order we think makes sense.

Listed below are the changes made for version 0.2.0 to previously existing functions:

calculate_threat(data, type)

plot_heatmap(data, type, data_type, binwidth, theme)

plot_pass(data, 
          type, progressive_pass, 
          cross, shot, switch, outcome, 
          theme)

plot_passflow(data, data_type, binwidth)

plot_pizza(data, type, template, 
           color_possession, color_attack, color_defense, color_compare,
           player_1, player_2, 
           season, season_player_1, season_player_2, 
           theme)

plot_scatter(data, x, y, label,
             set_size_num, set_size_var,
             set_color_num, set_color_var,
             title, title_size,
             subtitle, subtitle_size,
             caption, caption_size,
             theme)

plot_shot(data, type, bins, highlight_goals, average_location)

plot_sonar(data, data_type, title)

plot_trendline(data, team, color_xg, color_xga, rolling_average, theme)

plot_timeline(data, match_year, 
              team_home, team_away,
              color_home, color_away, theme)

## Install previous 0.1.2 version
devtools::install_github("abhiamishra/[email protected]")