zoo in om_get_rundata() and fn_get_runfile()

[COBrogan]

@rburghol I think we should add an argument to om_get_rundata() to pass model data directly as a data frame. This optional argument would be set to FALSE to preserve legacy code that relies on a zoo output. I find zoo frustrating to work with - since it works on matrices it is incapable of holding multiple data types. Our model data thisdate column is always NA as we are forced to convert the entire zoo to numeric by setting the mode(). fn_get_runfile() already has an outaszoo argument that we can leverage. My proposal would be as simple as:

om_get_rundata <- function(elid, runid, site='http://deq2.bse.vt.edu',
                           cached=FALSE, hydrowarmup=TRUE,
                           cleanup = FALSE,
                          outaszoo = FALE) {
  # replace this with a single function that grabs
  # a hydro model for summarization and slims it down
  dat <- fn_get_runfile(elid, runid, 37, site,  cached = FALSE, cleanup = cleanup, outaszoo = outaszoo )
  syear = as.integer(min(dat$year))
...
  #Get the window of interest from the timeseries
  if(outaszoo){
    dat <- stats::window(dat, start = sdate, end = edate)
    #Change mode of zoo to numeric e.g. Convert all fields to numeric
    mode(dat) <- 'numeric'
  }else{
    dat <- dat[dat$timestamp >= sdate & dat$timestamp <= edate,]
  }
  
}

If you agree, I'll make these changes next week. It shouldn't impact any existing code as we'll just be adding a new final argument.

[rburghol]

This makes sense, my only comment would be that shouldn't the default argument outaszoo=TRUE, since that is the current behavior?

[COBrogan]

Oh yes, you are correct. outaszoo = TRUE would be the default to make sure a zoo ts is returned unless a user switches it to false. I updated hydrotools on 01/07/2026 (v 1.0.11) to include this.