Feature Request: Boolean composition operators for esearch with web_history objects

[billdenney]

In my use case, I need to create a complex query that will likely require creating many smaller queries first and combining them with a web_history. (Specifically, I'm doing a search for many medications, and then I want to look for drug-drug interactions between them, pairwise.)

For that, it would be helpful to be able to create a new search from multiple esearch objects that have a web_history.

Specifically, what I'm thinking of is to be able to simplify the last two lines of this:

library(rentrez)

query_part1 <- "(adolescent[Title/Abstract] OR adolescents[Title/Abstract] OR apprentice[Title/Abstract] OR apprentices[Title/Abstract] OR child[Title/Abstract] OR children[Title/Abstract] OR pupil[Title/Abstract] OR pupils[Title/Abstract] OR student[Title/Abstract] OR students[Title/Abstract] OR teenager[Title/Abstract] OR teenagers[Title/Abstract] OR trainee[Title/Abstract] OR trainees[Title/Abstract] OR young adult[Title/Abstract] OR young adults[Title/Abstract] OR young people[Title/Abstract] OR young worker[Title/Abstract] OR young workers[Title/Abstract] OR younger population[Title/Abstract] OR youth[Title/Abstract])"
query_part3 <- "(frequency[Title/Abstract] OR frequencys[Title/Abstract] OR occurence[Title/Abstract] OR prevalence[Title/Abstract] OR prevalences[Title/Abstract] OR rate[Title/Abstract] OR rates[Title/Abstract] OR risk[Title/Abstract] OR risks[Title/Abstract])"

q1 <- entrez_search(db="pubmed", term=query_part1, use_history=TRUE)
q3 <- entrez_search(db="pubmed", term=query_part3, use_history=TRUE, WebEnv=q1$web_history$WebEnv)

query_combine_1_3 <- sprintf("#%s AND #%s", q1$web_history$QueryKey, q3$web_history$QueryKey)
q1_3 <- entrez_search(db="pubmed", term=query_combine_1_3, use_history=TRUE, WebEnv=q1$web_history$WebEnv)

I'd like to be able to replace:

query_combine_1_3 <- sprintf("#%s AND #%s", q1$web_history$QueryKey, q3$web_history$QueryKey)
q1_3 <- entrez_search(db="pubmed", term=query_combine_1_3, use_history=TRUE, WebEnv=q1$web_history$WebEnv)

With:

q1_3 <- q1 & q3

What would happen under the hood would look a lot like the code that I gave above:

• Extract the web_history object from the query
• Confirm that the web_history objects from both queries were the same WebEnv (if not, error)
• Get the QueryKey from both web_history objects, and add a "#" in front of them and parentheses around them.
• Add the correct boolean operator in front of (for NOT) or between (for AND and OR) the queries with parentheses around the history QueryKey.
• Do the search