Dplyr: Cannot open databases any more

[lukeholman]

Hi,

I recently updated dplyr, and it seems to have broken my code for accessing a database that I have on my local disk.

Trying to connect to the database with:

my_db <- src_sqlite("my_database.db")

Gives the error message: "Error: Condition message must be a string."

I can connect fine using DBI via the command:

con <- DBI::dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite(), "my_database.db")

This suggests my database is still accessible and working fine. In light of the documentation for the new dbplyr package, I thought that maybe I could access the tables using

tbl(con, "name_of_table")

But this does not work, even though the tables all appear fine when I type dbListTables(con). I get the same error message, "Error: Condition message must be a string."

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[tkfranzia]

Same issue here. Temporary fix on my end has been SQL via:

tbl(con, sql('select * from my_database.db'))

Possibly worth noting DBI, RJDBC, and RODBC all connect fine as well.

[batpigandme]

Hi,
I'm not sure of the answers, but, just to help us isolate the problem, what versions did you update from/to? I don't think it's necessarily related, but #3164 is the most recent change I can find related to src_sqlite().

[lukeholman]

Hi,
I currently have dplyr_0.7.4, and I upgraded from dplyr_0.5.0. I wondered if this has something to do with the recent changes to database backends (https://github.com/tidyverse/dplyr/blob/master/NEWS.md), but apparently src_sqlite is supposed to still be working ok.

Thanks!

[lukeholman]

I seem to have solved the issue by running install.packages("dbplyr"). Maybe it's worth making this package a dependency of dplyr? src_sqlite() is apparently still a dplyr function (you can see this with ?src_sqlite), but it seems to only work if dbplyr is also installed (you don't need to run library(dbplyr) though).

[tkfranzia]

I had dbplyr and all necessary packages installed when experiencing the issues, but it made no difference from my previous comment. I'm not sure that it makes a difference, but I am using src_postgres(), not scr_sqlite().

[mbojan]

I think I ran into the same issue. Running testthat tests of a function that accesses SQLite database work locally when I use "Test package" in RStudio. But fail with the following when tests are run via "Check package" in RStudio or by TravisCI:

checking tests ... ERROR
  Running ‘testthat.R’
Running the tests in ‘tests/testthat.R’ failed.
Last 13 lines of output:
  14: tbl.DBIConnection(., "Codings")
  15: check_dbplyr()
  16: check_pkg("dbplyr", "communicate with database backends", install = FALSE)
  17: glubort(NULL, "The {name} package is required to {reason}.", if (install) "\nPlease install it with `install.packages(\"{name}\")`")
  18: .abort(text)
  19: cnd_error(type, .msg = msg, .call = sys.call(-1))
  20: new_cnd(c(.type, "error"), ..., .msg = .msg)
  21: stop("Condition message must be a string", call. = FALSE)

See also https://travis-ci.org/mbojan/maxqdar/builds/310860713

Session info ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 setting  value                       
 version  R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)
 system   x86_64, mingw32             
 ui       RStudio (1.1.383)           
 language (EN)                        
 collate  Polish_Poland.1250          
 tz       Europe/Warsaw               
 date     2017-12-03                  

Packages ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 package    * version    date       source                           
 assertthat   0.2.0      2017-04-11 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 base       * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 bindr        0.1        2016-11-13 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 bindrcpp     0.2        2017-06-17 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 bit          1.1-12     2014-04-09 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 bit64        0.9-7      2017-05-08 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 blob         1.1.0      2017-06-17 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 commonmark   1.4        2017-09-01 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 compiler     3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 crayon       1.3.4      2017-12-03 Github (r-lib/crayon@b5221ab)    
 datasets   * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 DBI          0.7        2017-06-18 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 dbplyr       1.1.0.9000 2017-12-03 Github (hadley/dbplyr@a424f67)   
 devtools     1.13.4     2017-11-09 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 digest       0.6.12     2017-01-27 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 dplyr        0.7.4.9000 2017-12-03 Github (hadley/dplyr@fc66342)    
 glue         1.2.0      2017-10-29 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 graphics   * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 grDevices  * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 magrittr     1.5        2014-11-22 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 maxqdar    * 0.0.1      <NA>       local                            
 memoise      1.1.0      2017-04-21 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 methods    * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 pillar       0.0.0.9000 2017-12-03 Github (r-lib/pillar@5a082e1)    
 pkgconfig    2.0.1      2017-03-21 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 purrr        0.2.4      2017-10-18 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 R6           2.2.2      2017-06-17 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 Rcpp         0.12.14    2017-11-23 CRAN (R 3.4.3)                   
 rlang        0.1.4      2017-11-05 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 roxygen2     6.0.1      2017-02-06 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 RSQLite      2.0        2017-06-19 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 rstudioapi   0.7        2017-09-07 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 stats      * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 stringi      1.1.6      2017-11-17 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 stringr      1.2.0      2017-02-18 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 testthat   * 1.0.2      2016-04-23 CRAN (R 3.4.3)                   
 tibble       1.3.4.9003 2017-12-03 Github (tidyverse/tibble@60281b3)
 tidyselect   0.2.3      2017-11-06 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 tools        3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 utils      * 3.4.3      2017-11-30 local                            
 withr        2.1.0      2017-11-01 CRAN (R 3.4.2)                   
 xml2         1.1.1      2017-01-24 CRAN (R 3.4.1)                   
 yaml         2.1.15     2017-12-01 CRAN (R 3.4.2) 

[krlmlr]

Thanks. As noted before, you now need the dbplyr package to access database backends. We cannot make dbplyr a dependency of dplyr, because dbplyr imports and overrides functions and methods from dplyr.

The error message looks strange because of this:

dput(glue::glue("abc", NULL))
#> structure(character(0), class = c("glue", "character"))

@jimhester: Has the behavior of glue(..., NULL) changed recently?

[jimhester]

No this is not new behavior and this is the expected behavior https://github.com/tidyverse/glue/blame/master/tests/testthat/test-glue.R#L184-L191

[dmitriyshashkin]

This error message is really confusing. If not for this thread, I would have never linked it to the missing dependency.