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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

worldbank (development version)

worldbank 0.11.0

CRAN release: 2026-10-02

Breaking changes

  • pip_cp(), pip_data(), and pip_group() now default to povline = NULL, which uses the international poverty line of the requested ppp_version instead of the outdated 2.15.
  • wb_cache_delete(), deprecated since worldbank 0.8.0, is now defunct. Use wb_cache_clear() instead.
  • wb_indicator() now returns every topic of an indicator in topic_id and topic_value, separated by ;, instead of only the first. topic_id is now character, and comparisons such as topic_value == "Health" no longer match indicators with several topics. Use grepl("(^|;)Health(;|$)", topic_value) instead.

New features

  • Progress bars for slow paginated requests can now be turned off with options(worldbank.progress = FALSE).
  • wb_country() gains region, income_level, and lending_type arguments to filter countries server-side instead of downloading the full list.
  • wb_data() gains an mrnev argument to return the most recent non-empty values for each country, even if they are from different years. Unlike mrv, it keeps countries without a value in the most recent year.
  • wb_data() gains a source argument to query a database other than the World Development Indicators, as listed by wb_source().
  • New wb_document() searches the World Bank Documents & Reports archive by search term, country, document type, project, and date. Use limit to cap the number of documents returned, since broad queries can match hundreds of thousands of documents.
  • wb_indicator() and wb_search() gain a source argument to query indicators from a specific database, as listed by wb_source().
  • wb_project() gains a limit argument to cap the number of projects returned.
  • wb_project() is now several times faster, since it only requests the fields it returns.

Bug fixes

  • Requests are now also retried on HTTP 502 and 504 responses, which the World Bank APIs return for temporary gateway failures.
  • pip_data() and pip_group() now accept year = "all" and year = "MRV", which the PIP API supports, instead of only four-digit years.
  • wb_bulk() now trims whitespace and returns NA instead of "" for empty fields.
  • wb_data() and the other Indicators API functions now fetch every page of results, instead of silently returning only the first 32,500 rows.
  • wb_project() no longer returns duplicated or missing projects for queries spanning several pages. Projects are now sorted by descending id.
  • wb_project() now errors when start_date is after end_date, instead of silently returning no projects.
  • wb_search() gains a fixed argument to match pattern as a literal string. As in grepl(), the match is case sensitive, but it no longer warns about ignore.case.

worldbank 0.10.0

CRAN release: 2026-08-21

  • The PIP functions now require release_version and ppp_version to be exactly 8 and 4 digits, given as a string or a number.
  • fone_dataset() and fone_view() now return no more than the requested limit when pagination is required.
  • fone_dataset(), fone_view(), and the PIP functions now keep Namibia’s "NA" country code, instead of reading it as a missing value.
  • fone_view() now trims whitespace and returns NA instead of "" for empty fields, matching fone_dataset() and the rest of the package.
  • pip_cp(), pip_data(), pip_group(), and pip_versions() now trim whitespace and return NA instead of "" for empty fields, matching the rest of the package.
  • pip_cp(), pip_data(), and pip_group() now require povline to be a number between 0 and 2700, and pip_data() and pip_group() require popshare to be a number between 0 and 1.
  • pip_data() and pip_group() now correctly document popshare as taking precedence over povline; the documentation previously claimed the opposite. The behavior is unchanged.
  • wb_bulk() now keeps Namibia’s "NA" code in the iso2_code and wb_iso2_code columns of the country table, instead of reading it as a missing value.
  • wb_data() gains a footnote argument to return the footnotes published with each observation.
  • wb_data() no longer returns NA dates when a query mixes annual and sub-annual indicators.
  • wb_project() now returns results when country holds more than one code, instead of silently returning no rows. Codes are also upper-cased before querying, and must be two characters, since the Projects API matches them exactly.
  • wb_project() now accepts multiple values for id, status, and region, returning the projects that match any of them.
  • wb_project() now requires status to be one of "active", "closed", "dropped", or "pipeline", matched case insensitively.
  • wb_project() now numbers the rows of the returned data frame, instead of naming them after the project IDs already held in the id column.
  • wb_search() now numbers the rows of the returned data frame, instead of naming them after each match’s position in the indicator catalog.

worldbank 0.9.1

CRAN release: 2026-06-29

  • wb_data() now returns an empty data frame instead of erroring when a query has no observations.

worldbank 0.9.0

CRAN release: 2026-05-03

  • wb_bulk() downloads the entire World Development Indicators dataset as a zip and returns its six CSVs as a list of data frames, including footnote and series-time metadata not exposed by the API.
  • wb_search() searches the indicator catalog for a regular expression pattern across one or more fields.
  • Documentation improvements.

worldbank 0.8.0

CRAN release: 2026-03-15

  • wb_data() gains mrv and gapfill parameters to query the most recent values and forward-fill missing data.
  • wb_project() queries World Bank project data with support for filtering by country, status, region, date range, and free-text search.
  • pip_cp() returns country profile data from the PIP API.
  • pip_data() gains a nowcast parameter to include nowcast estimates.
  • wb_cache_clear() replaces wb_cache_delete(), which is now deprecated.

worldbank 0.7.1

CRAN release: 2025-12-06

  • Don’t cache queries in tests to comply with CRAN

worldbank 0.7.0

CRAN release: 2025-11-10

  • Added optional request caching to improve performance for repeated queries. Enable with options(worldbank.cache = TRUE). Cache duration can be customized with worldbank.cache_max_age (default: 1 day).
  • New functions wb_cache_delete() and wb_cache_dir() to manage the cache.

worldbank 0.6.1

CRAN release: 2025-08-29

  • Documentation improvements.

worldbank 0.6.0

CRAN release: 2025-05-29

worldbank 0.5.0

CRAN release: 2025-01-27

worldbank 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2024-12-09

  • Removed conditional return of tibble and now always return a data.frame instead. This ensures type stability across all functions.
  • Add support for Finances One API data.

worldbank 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2024-08-26

  • Moved to HTTPS for all API calls.
  • Support for Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) data.

worldbank 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2024-07-31

worldbank 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2024-07-02

  • Initial CRAN submission.