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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

GEOquery 2.81.23 (2026-06-16)

New features

  • Seurat interoperability for single-cell data (optional; Seurat in Suggests). readGEOSingleCell() now reads .rds supplementary files containing a Seurat or SingleCellExperiment object (detected by class; Seurat coerced to SingleCellExperiment), so .rds is now a loadable single-cell format. Both readGEOSingleCell() and getGEOSingleCell() gain as = "Seurat" to return Seurat objects (coerced at the output boundary). SingleCellExperiment remains the internal representation; see ADR-0006 (#195, #196, #197).

GEOquery 2.81.22 (2026-06-14)

New features

  • geoSingleCellManifest() and getGEOSingleCell() now handle the common case where a Series ships only a GSE..._RAW.tar at the series level and the per-sample files live in each sample’s own GSM suppl directory (e.g. GSE132771). When the series level has no loadable single-cell units, the manifest falls back to enumerating the Series’ samples (via getGEO()) and inventorying each GSM suppl directory. Both functions also accept a GSM accession directly (getGEOSingleCell("GSM3891612")), and geoSingleCellManifest() gains a samples argument to restrict to specific GSMs without enumerating the whole Series. Unit files are downloaded by URL, so the readers work whether the data lives at the series or sample level (#190).
  • getGEOSingleCell() gains a by argument — one of "sample" (default; a named list of one SingleCellExperiment per sample), "platform" (a named list keyed by platform/GPL, each platform’s samples combined), or "all" (a single combined object) — replacing the previous combine flag. A GEO Series can span multiple platforms (e.g. GSE132771 mixes mouse and human), and the platform is the natural feature-compatibility boundary, so by = "platform" is the right way to combine a multi-platform study; the return shape is determined by the argument, not the data. geoSingleCellManifest() now reports a platform (GPL) column per sample, and geoSingleCellUnits() treats each whole-study single file as its own unit so a study’s several .h5ad files are no longer merged into one bogus unit. Gzipped single-file formats (.h5ad.gz, .h5.gz) are recognized and transparently decompressed before reading. loom is reported but flagged not loadable, no built-in reader (.rds/Seurat support follows in 2.81.23) (#190).

Bug Fixes

  • Combining single-cell samples (getGEOSingleCell(by = "platform"|"all")) no longer fails with a cryptic cbind error ('mcols' ... do not match or subscript contains invalid names) when a Series’ samples have heterogeneous feature annotation — common in single-cell studies (e.g. GSE132771 mixes 10x CellRanger v2 genes.tsv with v3 features.tsv, giving different rowData columns). Samples are restricted to their shared features and given one canonical rowData before binding; when they share no features (so a single combined object is impossible) a clear, actionable error is raised (#190).

GEOquery 2.81.21 (2026-06-13)

Breaking changes

  • getGEO() now returns SummarizedExperiment objects by default for GSE Series Matrix records (previously ExpressionSet). Update downstream code from exprs()/pData()/fData() to assay()/colData()/rowData(), or pass returnType = "ExpressionSet" to keep the old behavior. Existing results can also be converted with as_SummarizedExperiment(). SOFT-format results (GDS/GPL/GSM/GSE S4 objects) are unaffected. See ADR-0002 and ADR-0005 (#168).

New features

  • Optional persistent download cache backed by BiocFileCache. Set options(GEOquery.cache = TRUE) to have downloads keyed on their URL and reused across sessions (location defaults to tools::R_user_dir("GEOquery", "cache"), overridable via options(GEOquery.cache.path = ...)). New geoCache() and clearGEOCache() expose and clear it. Off by default for now, preserving the historical destdir behavior (#171).
  • New readGEOSingleCell() and getGEOSingleCell() read GEO single-cell supplementary data into SingleCellExperiment objects: 10x Matrix Market and 10x HDF5 via TENxIO, AnnData .h5ad via anndataR (optional Suggests). getGEOSingleCell() returns a named list of per-sample objects (combine with care) and reports which units it loads and skips. loom, files inside _RAW.tar, and idiosyncratic layouts are intentionally out of scope — use geoSingleCellManifest() + readGEOSingleCell() for those (#158, #190).
  • New geoSingleCellManifest() inventories a GSE’s supplementary files and classifies them by single-cell format (10x Matrix Market triplet, 10x HDF5, AnnData h5ad, loom, Seurat rds, tar), grouping by GSM sample — so you can see what a single-cell study contains before downloading. geoSingleCellUnits() collapses the manifest into loadable units (per sample + format) and flags completeness (e.g. an incomplete 10x triplet). Steps toward single-cell readers (ADR-0004) (#158, #188, #189).
  • getGEO() gains a returnType argument. With returnType = "SummarizedExperiment", GSE Series Matrix results are returned as SummarizedExperiment objects instead of ExpressionSet. The default remains "ExpressionSet" for now (with a one-time notice) and will switch to "SummarizedExperiment" in a future release. A new exported as_SummarizedExperiment() coerces an existing ExpressionSet result without re-downloading. See ADR-0002 (#168).
  • Downloads now stream to disk instead of buffering the entire response in memory, retry on transient HTTP errors, and honor a configurable GEOquery.download.timeout option (default 300 seconds) — replacing the previous enforced 120-second floor that ignored lower user timeouts. Failures raise a typed geoquery_download_error carrying the URL and HTTP status. getDirListing() now uses the same httr2 layer (#147, #173).
  • GEOquery now raises typed error conditions — geoquery_error and subclasses (geoquery_private_accession, geoquery_download_error, geoquery_parse_error, geoquery_bad_accession) — so failures can be handled programmatically with tryCatch() (#170, #184, #186).
  • getGEOSuppFiles() gains a quiet argument (defaulting to the GEOquery.quiet option, or FALSE) to suppress informational messages such as “No supplemental files found” and “Using locally cached version” (#68, #182).

Documentation

  • The S4 class and accessor documentation is filled in: the GEOData accessors (Meta, Table, Columns, dataTable, Accession, GSMList, GPLList) now have real descriptions, return values, and examples, and the class pages no longer imply constructing objects with new() — they are returned by getGEO() (#103, #192).

  • Documentation is reorganized into narrative pkgdown articles — Understanding GEO data formats, RNA-seq quantifications, Single-cell data from GEO, and From GEO to downstream analysis — that cover the why (entity types, file formats) and downstream workflows with links to other Bioconductor packages. The package vignette is now a concise quick-start that indexes them; the articles render on the pkgdown site and are excluded from R CMD check (#156, #191).

  • The package DESCRIPTION and biocViews now describe GEOquery’s actual scope (microarray, RNA-seq, and single-cell; GEO Series Matrix files parsed to ExpressionSet by default) instead of microarray-only (#71, #181).

Bug Fixes

  • Supplemental-file URLs are now built with a small url_join() helper instead of file.path(), which mangled https:// into https:/ and produced double slashes. Affects getGEOSuppFiles(fetch_files = FALSE) and getGEOSeriesFileListing() (#131, #178).
  • GDS2eSet() no longer fails when a GDS has an NA (or empty) value in its ID_REF column (e.g. GDS3666). Such values are replaced with a usable feature name instead of producing “row names contain missing values” (#21, #177).
  • getGEO() now fails with a clear message when an accession is private, embargoed, or not yet public (NCBI returns an HTML page) instead of mis-parsing it or, in older versions, looping. findFirstEntity() is also hardened against a multi-line edge case that could error and against unbounded reads (#58, #176).
  • getGEO(parseCharacteristics = FALSE) now actually skips characteristics parsing. The flag was accepted at the top level but dropped before reaching parseGSEMatrix(); it is now threaded through getAndParseGSEMatrices() and parseGEO() (#60, #175).
  • Fixed error when parsing GSE matrix files with malformed or empty lines between sample metadata (e.g., GSE425). Sample lines are now extracted directly using pattern matching to avoid issues with irregular file formatting (#162).

GEOquery 2.75.0 (2024-10-01)

New Features

  • RNAseq data support for GEOquery. Now you can use RNASeq quantification data prepared by NCBI.
  • Basic search in GEO database. Now you can search for datasets in GEO database using GEOquery.
  • browseGEO() function to open a web browser with a GEO accession.

Bug Fixes or Improvements

Not an exhaustive list, but some highlights:

  • Using httr2 instead of curl for better control over HTTP requests.
  • Removed dead gunzip code.