Changelog • countryatlas

countryatlas 2.0.0

A major release that wires countryatlas into the database-rendering world via ‘ggsql’, widens the map vocabulary, and fixes several correctness issues found by auditing 1.0.0. The version is bumped to 2.0.0 because the bug fixes change the output of world_map() (quantile binning), bubble_map() / flow_map() (de-duplicated symbols), geom_country_labels() (label placement) and convert_country() (override-only entities) — code that depended on the old behaviour may see different maps or values.

New: database-side rendering with ggsql

as_ggsql_source() exports a curated, ISO-reconciled, WDI-joined table (with sf geometry WKB-encoded) as a ggsql source — a DuckDB connection, a Parquet file, or a nanoarrow stream. countryatlas does the reconciliation ggsql’s static bundled world can’t; ggsql does the database push-down and Vega-Lite output countryatlas doesn’t.
world_query() emits a ggsql spatial query (VISUALISE … DRAW spatial PROJECT TO … SCALE … LABEL …) — a dependency-free string builder.
interactive_map(engine = "ggsql") registers the data and renders the map in DuckDB, returning a Vega-Lite widget.
ggsql, duckdb, DBI and nanoarrow are optional Suggests. See the new countryatlas and ggsql vignette.

New: maps, projections and helpers

globe_map() — an orthographic globe choropleth, with backend = "sf" (smoothest limb) or backend = "polygon" (needs only maps + mapproj).
spin_globe() — a rotating-globe animated GIF (one globe_map() frame per central longitude, assembled with gifski or magick).
facet_map() — small-multiple choropleths (the static counterpart to animate_world()).
wdj_crs() gains eight projections (mercator, winkel_tripel, eckert4, gall_peters, orthographic, azimuthal_equal_area, north_polar, south_polar); world_map() / world_geometry() accept them all.
locate_country() — point-in-polygon lookup tagging lon/lat with iso3c.
repair_country_names() — the “act on it” companion to check_country_match(): auto-applies confident string-distance fixes.
country_join_all() — reduce-join many messy country tables on the ISO spine.
growth_rate(), index_to(), share_of_world() — panel analysis helpers.
country_overrides() — preferred name for wdj_overrides() (kept as an alias) after the rename to countryatlas.
country_groups_tbl gains Mercosur, GCC, Nordic and Visegrad.

Bug fixes

world_map(style = "quantile"/"jenks") computed breaks over polygon vertices, so a country’s geometric complexity biased the quantiles and the bins held unequal numbers of countries. Breaks are now computed on one value per country.
bubble_map(backend = "sf") placed bubbles in projected metres on a degrees base map (off the map). The base map and bubbles now share one projected CRS via coord_sf().
Polygon centroids returned more than one row for ten iso3c codes (overrides map several names — Azores/Madeira → PRT — to one code), fanning out joins in bubble_map() / flow_map(). Centroids are now one antimeridian-safe row per country (the largest piece).
geom_country_labels() placed labels at the bounding-box midpoint over all of a country’s pieces, so the US / Fiji / NZ labels drifted into the wrong ocean. Labels now sit on each country’s largest piece.
projection = "plate_carree" built an incoherent PROJ string (+proj=longlat … +units=m); it is now true equirectangular (+proj=eqc).
convert_country() only applied wdj_overrides() for to = "iso3c", so override-only entities (e.g. “Canary Islands”) returned NA for derived destinations. It now routes through the corrected iso3c first.

countryatlas 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2026-06-24

A single, comprehensive release that takes the package from a one-function proof of concept to a complete toolkit for joining world data to maps. The spirit is unchanged — ISO codes as the universal join key, one call to a map-ready table — but pushed to its full potential.

Breaking-ish changes

world_data() is generalised but backward-compatible: world_data(2020) still returns the classic polygon-backed, GDP-per-capita tibble. The only visible change is the column name gdp_per_capita_2015 → gdp_per_capita. A one-cycle deprecation shim keeps gdp_per_capita_2015 available as an alias (toggle with options(countryatlas.gdp_compat = FALSE)).
The 16 regions the previous version silently dropped (Kosovo, Micronesia, the Virgin Islands, Saint Martin, Bonaire/Saba/Sint Eustatius, the Canary Islands, Madeira/Azores, …) are now matched via [wdj_overrides()] instead of deleted, so they appear on maps. Diffs of map output will show increased coverage.

New: core data assembly

world_data() gains indicator (one or many WDI codes; named vectors drive clean column names), multi-year panels, an sf backend (geometry = "sf"), region subsetting, latest, projections and caching.
country_data() — the lightweight, one-row-per-country analysis table.
world_geometry() — projected, region-subset geometry (countries, centroids, coastline, borders, graticule, ocean).

New: the join engine (exposed for your data)

standardize_country(), join_world(), attach_geometry(), country_join().

New: diagnostics

check_country_match(), wdj_overrides(), audit_coverage() — never lose a country silently.

New: reference data & translation

convert_country() (flags, currency, tld, research codes), country_codes(), country_groups() / in_group(), wdi_search().
Bundled datasets: world_snapshot, country_meta, common_indicators, country_groups_tbl, world_tiles.

New: analysis helpers

per_capita(), aggregate_regions(), rank_countries(), complete_years().

New: visualization

world_map() (continuous / binned / quantile / jenks / categorical), bubble_map(), bivariate_map(), cartogram_map(), tile_map(), flow_map(), animate_world(), interactive_map(), geom_country_labels(), theme_world_map().

Performance & offline

WDI fetches are memoised with an optional on-disk cache; multiple indicators are fetched in parallel (parallel::mclapply) where supported. See clear_wdi_cache().
The bundled world_snapshot lets every example, test and vignette run offline and deterministically.

Engineering

Namespace hygiene (targeted @importFrom instead of blanket @import).
Input validation with friendly cli / rlang errors.
A testthat (3e) suite; network calls are skipped offline and on CRAN.
Vignettes and a pkgdown site.
Refreshed CI: R-CMD-check, test-coverage and pkgdown workflows.
Heavy spatial dependencies (sf, rnaturalearth, cartogram, biscale, geofacet, gganimate, leaflet, …) are all in Suggests and gated by rlang::check_installed(), so the base install stays light.

Group memberships in country_groups_tbl are point-in-time as of 2024-01-01.

countryatlas 0.1.0

Initial experimental release with a single world_data(year) function.