as_epi_df construction conviences

[dsweber2]

A couple of things I realized would be convenient when trying to use as_epi_df:

• allow for common time_value aliases. E.g. if date or anything containing that is present and unique, just assume that the user means that that column should be used as the time_value. Maybe info that it's happening.
• if no geo_value is present, assume that all values have the same geo_value at a national scale
• give an alias argument that allows the user to input e.g. geo_value = some_col, time_value = date. This is basically just allowing them to skip writing a rename immediately before as_epi_df

[dsweber2]

@lcbrooks @nmdefries would like your opinion at some point on whether we ought to do this/rough priority

[brookslogan]

My thoughts:

• Guessing a time_value column: sounds reasonable; not sure if this should be based on names or classes or both though. cli_informing sounds good.
• Inventing single geo_value: less sure about this one. We won't know which nation to guess, so I'd imagine it'd need to be some other special value like "unspecified" [and same sort of thing with geo_type, maybe "custom"?]. Plus we should check for unique time values to make sure we're not just missing some key vars. Really, I think we should be checking epikey-times are unique identifiers all the time, but especially in this case.
• Avoiding rename: sounds nice. For the geo_value = some_col, time_value = date interface, we should use the tidyselect package. We should match whatever our decision is here in "Promote" other_keys to be printed, a constructor parameter, and more clearly documented #186 / [enh] promote other_keys  #446 (though that needs to accommodate 0 / >1 selections as well, but that is probably possible just by using a common tidyselect command and removing a length check on the result).

Priority: seems like one of many individually-low- to medium- priority papercuts that keep being neglected. If it's been annoying you recently, seems like a good time to handle it.

[dshemetov]

closed by #460