Skip to contents

Download Sound Recordings from Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)

Source: R/get_ala_sound.R
get_ala_sounds.Rd

Queries the ALA for sound recordings of a specified taxon and downloads them. This function improves upon basic media downloads by handling metadata and limiting download counts.

Usage

get_ala_sounds(
  taxon_name,
  target_n = 50,
  download = TRUE,
  out_dir = "sounds",
  include_taxon_name = TRUE,
  supplier = c("all", "CSIRO"),
  as_wav = FALSE
)

Arguments

taxon_name

Character. Scientific or common name of the taxon to search for.

target_n

Numeric. Target number of sound files to download. Default is 50.

download

Logical. If TRUE, downloads audio files. If FALSE, only returns the count of available recordings. Default is TRUE.

out_dir

Character. Output directory for downloaded files. Will create subdirectories "audio" and "metadata.csv". Default is "sounds".

include_taxon_name

Logical. If TRUE, prepends the taxon name to the filename. Default is TRUE.

supplier

Character. Data supplier to filter for. Options are "all" or "CSIRO". If "CSIRO", filters for records with institutionCode "ANWC" and collectionCode "Sounds". A lightweight count check is performed first; if no CSIRO records exist, the function returns 0 immediately without downloading the full media metadata. Default is "all".

as_wav

Logical. If TRUE, converts downloaded audio files to WAV format. Default is FALSE.

Value

Character. The absolute path to the metadata CSV file created/updated.

Details

When download = TRUE, the function:

  • Creates out_dir/audio/ directory for audio files

  • Creates out_dir/metadata_ala.csv with record metadata

  • Downloads files named as [Taxon_Name_]<record_id>.<ext>

  • Deduplicates media records by URL before downloading (ALA can return multiple rows pointing to the same audio file)

  • Skips files that already exist in the output directory or have been downloaded in the current batch

  • Uses the ALA recordID for filenames; when missing, extracts a UUID from the audio URL for traceability back to the source record

  • Falls back to the searched taxon_name when scientificName is missing from a record

  • Automatically converts recordings to WAV if as_wav = TRUE

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
galah_config(email = "your-email@example.com")
# Search and download up to 10 sounds as WAV
get_ala_sounds("Teleogryllus commodus", target_n = 10, as_wav = TRUE)
} # }