Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

fred 0.3.0

A research-grade upgrade in three logical blocks: (1) discoverability and reference data, (2) workflow utilities and the default plot method, and (3) reproducibility helpers. 35 exports + 4 S3 methods, 275 tests, three new vignettes.

Discoverability and reference data

• New fred_catalogue() returns an offline curated catalogue of around 50 widely used FRED series (GDP, employment, inflation, rates, housing, financial, money/credit, trade/FX, consumer, fiscal). Filter by category or free-text. No API call required.
• New fred_browse() pretty-prints the FRED category tree. With no arguments, shows the eight top-level categories from a static reference (no API call). Pass a category_id to drill into children.
• New fred_recession_dates() returns NBER business-cycle reference dates (peak, trough, duration) since 1857. Pass a vector of dates to flag to get back per-observation in-recession indicators for use as a regression covariate.
• New fred_fomc_dates() returns FOMC scheduled meeting decision dates 2017 to 2025, including SEP-meeting flags. Selected unscheduled meetings during stress periods are included.
• fred_tbl now threads through fred_search(), fred_category(), fred_category_children(), fred_category_series(), fred_releases(), fred_release_series(), fred_release_dates(), fred_sources(), fred_source_releases(), fred_tags(), fred_related_tags(), and fred_updates(). Their print headers now show the endpoint and search query (where applicable).
• New summary.fred_tbl() prints query metadata, dimensions, date range, and value range before the standard summary.data.frame output.
• New [.fred_tbl() preserves the fred_tbl class and fred_query attribute when subsetting.

Workflow utilities and plotting

• New fred_event_window() extracts data inside a c(before, after) day window around event dates. Works on both long and wide format. Handy for event studies around FOMC decisions, recession peaks, or release dates.
• New fred_aggregate() aggregates long or wide format data to a coarser calendar frequency (week / month / quarter / year) using mean, sum, first, last, median, min, or max. Complements server-side aggregation in fred_series(frequency = ...).
• New fred_interpolate() fills NA values via last-observation-carry- forward ("locf") or linear interpolation ("linear"). Useful for mixed-frequency analysis.
• New plot.fred_tbl() default plot method. Detects long or wide format, draws one line per series, and shades NBER recession periods. Uses base graphics: no ggplot2 dependency.

Reproducibility helpers

• New fred_cite_series() produces a citation for a FRED series in BibTeX, plain text, or bibentry form. Works offline (falls back to the series ID as the title); pass fetch_metadata = TRUE to use the official series title from fred_info(). Supports vintage-date pinning so cited data is reproducible even after revisions.
• New fred_manifest() snapshots one or more fred_tbl objects as a YAML manifest with query metadata, dimensions, date range, and an MD5 hash of each object. Saving the manifest alongside paper code lets reviewers verify that the underlying data is unchanged.
• New fred_vintage_revisions() returns per-observation revision summary statistics (n_vintages, first/final value, total revision, mean/SD of inter-vintage changes, days to final). Useful for choosing low-revision series for nowcasting and real-time analysis.

Vignettes

• New vignette multi-series-workflows: fetch, transform, widen, plot.
• New vignette nowcasting-with-fred: pseudo-real-time GDP nowcasting using monthly indicators, with vintage-aware backtesting (pairs with the nowcast package).
• New vignette inflation-revisions: tracking core inflation revisions using fred_real_time_panel() aligned to FOMC SEP meeting dates.

Documentation

• CITATION updated to v0.3.0 (was outdated against 0.1.0).
• New CITATION.cff file at the repository root for the GitHub citation widget and Zenodo deposit workflow.

fred 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2026-04-11

New features

• fred_series() gains a format argument. Pass format = "wide" to get one row per date with a column per series, instead of the default long layout.
• fred_series() gains a transform argument with readable aliases for the FRED units codes: "level", "diff", "yoy_diff", "qoq_pct", "yoy_pct", "annualised", "log", "log_diff", and more. The raw units codes still work; transform and units are mutually exclusive.
• New real-time and vintage helpers built on the ALFRED endpoint:
  • fred_as_of() returns a series as it appeared on a chosen vintage date.
  • fred_first_release() returns only the initial release of each observation, with no subsequent revisions.
  • fred_all_vintages() returns the full revision history.
  • fred_real_time_panel() returns the values that were available on each of a chosen set of vintage dates.
• New fred_cache_info() reports the cache directory, file count, total size, and per-file metadata. Useful for debugging stale results.
• All observation results are now returned as fred_tbl, a thin data.frame subclass with a one-line provenance header showing the query (series count, observation count, units, transform, frequency, vintage). The header is informational; downstream code can keep treating the result as a plain data frame.

Internals

• The cache key format is unchanged for default arguments, so caches built under 0.1.x are still picked up after upgrade. Realtime, output-type, and vintage requests are cached under distinct keys.

fred 0.1.2

CRAN release: 2026-03-19

• Removed non-existent pkgdown URL from DESCRIPTION.

fred 0.1.1

• Examples now use \donttest with tempdir() cache instead of \dontrun, fixing CRAN policy compliance.
• Cache directory is now configurable via options(fred.cache_dir = ...).

fred 0.1.0

• Initial CRAN release.
• Core function fred_series() for fetching one or more FRED time series.
• Server-side unit transformations and frequency aggregation.
• Local caching of downloaded data.
• Search, category, release, source, tag, and vintage endpoints.