Adding changes in LTC to new branch

[TKosfeld]

Submission of date comparison automation for acquiring LTC data. As of now the program queries the user for uuid submission. From someone working mostly on windows in a different directory I worked to eliminate any remnants of my computer specific settings, but please let me know if something remains.

Thanks,
Tim

[chris-prener]

thanks @TKosfeld! I'll have to see how this works... can you write up a minimal .R script that shows me the workflow?

[TKosfeld]

Updated with edge case handling (missing data file) and added a demonstration script in main folder.
Thanks,
Tim

[chris-prener]

hey @TKosfeld - this is good! A lot of hard work in here for sure. My struggle is that I still have to go to the website to get the unique ID code, and then the download process is longer than it takes to download the national file manually. Thoughts?

[TKosfeld]

I hope these new updates can help to address both the uuid and timing issue.

The single ltc function has been reworked into 3 functions in an effort to reduce time heavy R loops. My system.time() estimates placed this new function set at ~2.5 minutes in comparison to ~5 minutes with the previous code.

New scraping has been included to pull uuid as well.

Small changes have been made to column naming due to the removal of suspected case columns from the data (I confirmed the columns were missing with a manual data download).

Description of functions and new scraping tutorial have been added to ltc_README.txt.

[chris-prener]

This is great @TKosfeld - thanks for your patience! I'll be using this in my COVID work moving forward when I use LTC data. Thanks so much!