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Comparison · Infra & APIs

hereR vs surveytidy

A side-by-side editorial comparison of hereR and surveytidy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

hereR vs surveytidy: at a glance

FeaturehereRsurveytidy
SectorInfra & APIsInfra & APIs
Velocity score0.00.0
Sparks · 30d00
Top themesgeospatial, routing, api-client, r-packagesurvey-statistics, tidyverse, dplyr-verbs, metadata-tracking
Last editorial update1h ago6h ago
WebsiteVisit →Visit →

What is hereR?

An R client for HERE's location APIs, shaped almost entirely by what the vendor exposes next.

hereR wraps HERE's routing, isoline, traffic, weather and geocoding endpoints for R, returning sf objects. Development is steady and reactive: each release either adopts a transport mode, parameter or API version HERE has newly made available, or corrects a rate limit that was producing 429 errors in practice. The current release adds speed-limit control and five more isoline transport modes.

Read the full hereR trajectory →

What is surveytidy?

surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.

surveytidy is the tidyverse-facing half of a two-package survey stack, wrapping survey design objects from surveycore so filter, mutate, select and the rest work on them while carrying variable labels, value labels and a transformation log alongside the data. The May release extended that verb surface to survey_collection, the abstraction surveycore uses to hold several surveys as one object, so a pipeline written once dispatches across every member.

Read the full surveytidy trajectory →

hereR vs surveytidy: editorial side-by-side

H
hereR
INFRA · APIS
0.0

An R client for HERE's location APIs, shaped almost entirely by what the vendor exposes next.

◆ Current state

hereR wraps HERE's routing, isoline, traffic, weather and geocoding endpoints for R, returning sf objects. Development is steady and reactive: each release either adopts a transport mode, parameter or API version HERE has newly made available, or corrects a rate limit that was producing 429 errors in practice. The current release adds speed-limit control and five more isoline transport modes.

◆ Where it's heading

Two threads run through the whole history. One is coverage — new modes, tolls and currency, arrival times, speed limits — arriving in the package shortly after they appear in HERE's API. The other is defensive operational tuning, with request rates repeatedly lowered below HERE's documented limits because the documented limits do not hold up. 1.0.0 was the one moment the package had to move rather than choose, migrating traffic to v7 and weather to v3 and breaking three functions' output in the process.

◆ Prediction

Expect the next release to enable whatever HERE exposes next in routing or isolines, and to keep adjusting request rates empirically; the package's own design appears settled.

S
surveytidy
INFRA · APIS
0.0

surveytidy taught every dplyr verb to operate on a whole collection of surveys at once.

◆ Current state

surveytidy is the tidyverse-facing half of a two-package survey stack, wrapping survey design objects from surveycore so filter, mutate, select and the rest work on them while carrying variable labels, value labels and a transformation log alongside the data. The May release extended that verb surface to survey_collection, the abstraction surveycore uses to hold several surveys as one object, so a pipeline written once dispatches across every member.

◆ Where it's heading

The package is being built in two layers that arrive in order: vector-level transformations first, structural dispatch second. The make_* family in 0.4.0 handles the recoding that survey work actually consists of — labelled to factor, multi-level to dichotomous, scale reversal, valence flipping — with value labels propagating automatically. Collection support then applies data-masking, tidyselect, grouping, slicing and collapsing verbs per survey, with joins explicitly refused and a typed message reporting which surveys were skipped. Metadata fidelity is the recurring bug source: labels surviving across(), stale labels left behind by recoding, the transformation log keeping up with what the verbs did.

◆ Prediction

Joins are the one verb family that errors on collections, with users directed to join before constructing the collection, so that restriction is the clearest outstanding gap. The re-export of surveycore's collection constructors suggests the package is positioning itself as the single import users need, which points toward more re-exports as surveycore's stable API settles.

Alternatives to hereR and surveytidy

Other Infra & APIs 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 hereR or surveytidy.

See all hereR alternatives → · See all surveytidy alternatives →

Recent activity from hereR and surveytidy

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 2mo agosurveytidymutate() syncs metadata for across() recodes
  2. 3mo agosurveytidydplyr and tidyr verbs dispatch across survey collections
  3. 5mo agosurveytidyFive label-aware recoding functions for use inside mutate()
  4. 1y agohereRSpeed limits and five more isoline transport modes
  5. 1y agohereRPedestrian consumption model dropped; route request rate lowered
  6. 2y agohereRTraffic v7 and Weather v3 migration breaks three functions
  7. 3y agohereRResubmission after CRAN archival over an undeliverable email
  8. 4y agohereRToll costs and currency selection arrive in routing
  9. 4y agohereRArrival-time routing enabled; failed requests report their endpoint

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between hereR and surveytidy?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. hereR and surveytidy 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 hereR better than surveytidy?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. hereR and surveytidy 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to hereR?

Top hereR alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "hereR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/herer for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to surveytidy?

Top surveytidy alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "surveytidy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/surveytidy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.