Check keys against GBIF Backbone Taxonomy — gbif_verify

This function performs three checks:

keys are valid GBIF taxon keys. That means that adding a key at the end of the URL https://www.gbif.org/species/ returns a GBIF page related to a taxa.
keys are taxon keys of the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy checklist. That means that adding a key at the end of the URL https://www.gbif.org/species/ returns a GBIF page related to a taxa of the GBIF Backbone.)
keys are synonyms of other taxa (taxonomicStatus neither ACCEPTED nor DOUBTFUL).

Usage

gbif_verify_keys(keys, col_keys = "key")

Arguments

keys: (character or numeric) a vector, a list, or a data.frame containing the keys to verify.
col_keys: (character) name of column containing keys in case keys is a data.frame.

Value

a data.frame with the following columns:

key: (numeric) keys as input keys.
is_taxonKey: (logical) is the key a valid GBIF taxon key?
is_from_gbif_backbone: (logical) is the key a valid taxon key from GBIF Backbone Taxonomy checklist?
is_synonym: (logical) is the key related to a synonym (not ACCEPTED or DOUBTFUL)?

If a key didn't pass the first check (is_taxonKey = FALSE) then NA for other two columns. If a key didn't pass the second check (is_from_gbif_backbone = FALSE) then is_synonym = NA.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# input is a vector
keys1 <- c(
  "12323785387253", # invalid GBIF taxonKey
  "128545334", # valid taxonKey, not a GBIF Backbone key
  "1000693", # a GBIF Backbone key, synonym
  "1000310", # a GBIF Backbone key, accepted
  NA, NA
)
# input is a df
keys2 <- data.frame(
  keys = keys1,
  other_col = sample.int(40, size = length(keys1)),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
# input is a named list
keys3 <- keys1
names(keys3) <- purrr::map_chr(
  c(1:length(keys3)),
  ~ paste(sample(c(0:9, letters, LETTERS), 3),
    collapse = ""
  )
)
# input keys are numeric
keys4 <- as.numeric(keys1)

gbif_verify_keys(keys1)
gbif_verify_keys(keys2, col_keys = "keys")
gbif_verify_keys(keys3)
gbif_verify_keys(keys4)
} # }