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Downloads either the current ClinVar release or a named monthly archive from the NCBI HTTPS service. The VCV XML file is the normal input to rclinvarbitration_import_xml(). The two flat files are optional, validation-only inputs to rclinvarbitration_reproduce_clinvarbitration_parquet().

Usage

rclinvarbitration_download_clinvar(
  release = "latest",
  file = "vcv_xml",
  cache_dir = tools::R_user_dir("RClinVarbitration", "cache"),
  overwrite = FALSE,
  quiet = FALSE
)

Arguments

release

"latest" or a monthly archive in "YYYY-MM" form.

file

One or more of "vcv_xml", "submission_summary", and "variant_summary".

cache_dir

Directory in which downloaded files are cached.

overwrite

Download even when a valid cached file is present?

quiet

Passed to utils::download.file().

Value

A named character vector of local paths. The download attribute is a data frame containing source URLs, MD5 values when available, and cache hit status.

Details

Existing files form a local cache. Current files and archived VCV XML files are checked against NCBI's MD5 sidecar; a matching file is reused and a stale or corrupt file is replaced only after a temporary download is verified. NCBI does not publish MD5 sidecars beside archived flat files, so those files are reused by name unless overwrite = TRUE.

A complete VCV release is several gigabytes. The default cache location is returned by tools::R_user_dir("RClinVarbitration", "cache"). The function raises R's download timeout to at least the value of option RClinVarbitration.download_timeout (7200 seconds by default) for the call.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # interactive()
xml <- rclinvarbitration_download_clinvar(release = "latest")
xml_2026_03 <- rclinvarbitration_download_clinvar(release = "2026-03")
}