redcapConnection() and exportRecordsTyped(): Error in rbind(deparse.level, ...): Number of columns in arguments differ

[gorgyx]

I cannot read the records of a REDCap project although the connection ist "up".

This is what I did:
library(redcapAPI)
rcon <- redcapConnection(url = api_url, token = api_token)
records <- exportRecordsTyped(rcon, factors = FALSE)

Here the original error message that came up at this point:
Fehler in rbind(deparse.level, ...) :
Anzahl der Spalten der Argumente unterschiedlich

As I tried to track the error, I found:

1. rcon$fieldnames() does not include the fieldnames of a field with field_type "file" and some calc fields
2. The result of rcon$fieldnames() is a data.frame with 1 merged column instead of one with 3 columns, as seems to be expected in .exportRecordsTyped_fieldsArray (namespace:redcapAPI), row 13

ProjectFields <- rbind(ProjectFields, MissingFromFields)

where the error occurs.

str(rcon$fieldnames())

'data.frame': 266 obs. of 1 variable:
$ original_field_name.choice_value.export_field_name: chr "record_id;;record_id" "datum_anmeldung2;;datum_anmeldung2" "anrede;;anrede" "name;;name" ...

sessionInfo()

R version 4.5.2 (2025-10-31 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 22631)

Matrix products: default
LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.utf8 LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.utf8 LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.utf8 LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=German_Germany.utf8

time zone: Europe/Berlin
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base

other attached packages:
[1] redcapAPI_2.11.5

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] backports_1.5.0 lubridate_1.9.5 rappdirs_0.3.4 filelock_1.0.3 sodium_1.4.0 timechange_0.4.0 generics_0.1.4 shelter_0.2.1 getPass_0.2-4
[10] labelVector_0.1.2 compiler_4.5.2 rstudioapi_0.18.0 tools_4.5.2 checkmate_2.3.4 curl_7.0.0 mime_0.13 yaml_2.3.12 jsonlite_2.0.0
[19] chron_2.3-62

[spgarbet]

This is related to a recent patch. At issue the library is a bit brittle when it comes to REDCap updates on column additions. We can't test since we don't have old versions to compare with for backward compatibility. This spot was missed in a recent upgrade..

[spgarbet]

Also one suggestion, try version 2.11.3. It's pre all these changes. What version of REDCap is the server running?

[gorgyx]

The server is running REDCap v16.1.5 . Using redcapAPI v2.11.3, I get the same error at the same spot:

debug: ProjectFields <- rbind(ProjectFields, MissingFromFields)

Browse[1]> str(ProjectFields)

'data.frame': 266 obs. of 1 variable:
$ original_field_name.choice_value.export_field_name: chr "record_id;;record_id" "datum_anmeldung2;;datum_anmeldung2" "anrede;;anrede" "name;;name" ...

Browse[1]> str(MissingFromFields)

'data.frame': 5 obs. of 3 variables:
$ original_field_name: chr "antragsteller_ok" "anmeldung_pdf" "userok" "user_ok2" ...
$ choice_value : logi NA NA NA NA NA
$ export_field_name : chr "antragsteller_ok" "anmeldung_pdf" "userok" "user_ok2" ...

Browse[1]> n

Fehler in rbind(deparse.level, ...) :
Anzahl der Spalten der Argumente unterschiedlich

[spgarbet]

Okay, one last thing to isolate this. Try with version 2.9.1 of redcapAPI.

[gorgyx]

no change, sorry.

[spgarbet]

There were two obvious patchsets that would have made fixing this easy. Now we're into deeper waters. I'll work on some code to dig deeper into this.

[spgarbet]

This might be related to the parsing of csv's, I'm seeing ";" instead of ",". There was a recent patch on edge that fixed that. devtools::install_github('vubiostat/redcapAPI') installs the edge version with this patch.

[jubilee2]

It looks like exportFieldNames is expected to return 3 columns:

original_field_name, choice_value, export_field_name

However in this case it appears to be parsed as a single column with the name:

original_field_name.choice_value.export_field_name

and rows like:

record_id;;record_id

This suggests the API response delimiter may not match what redcapAPI expects, so the entire line is being read as one column instead of three. Later when exportRecordsTyped() tries to combine this with another data frame that actually has 3 columns, it triggers the “Number of columns in arguments differ” error.

[gorgyx]

no change when using redcapAPI_2.11.5.9000

[spgarbet]

Okay, this is definitely the ";" parse issue and the current patch doesn't fix it.

[spgarbet]

Using the edge version, on the redcapConnection, can you add csv_delimiter=';'