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I've recently been experimenting with UK government open data with R, and it seems like I could usefully wrap up some of my work into an R package.

I'd want the package to download the data either as an installation step or the first time the user wants to use it, rather than include it directly in the package.

Are there any examples of or guides for this kind of R package?

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  • Similar? – philshem♦ Jul 11 '16 at 19:17
  • Looks like just what I was looking for, thanks! – Jason Williams Jul 12 '16 at 6:12
  • hi, word of caution: i think it's rare that a dataset needs its own package. for examples of download automation scripts that require just one smartly-written script and a single source_url call from the user, see github.com/ajdamico/asdfree – Anthony Damico Jul 12 '16 at 11:40
  • @AnthonyDamico I thought the same thing initially, but actually OP is looking to write a wrapper for an existing dataset, wherever it may be hosted or mirrored. – philshem♦ Jul 12 '16 at 15:52
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    @JasonWilliams another option would be to wrap your data into a Data Package (frictionlessdata.io/data-packages) to make it more generally usable for people working with other data analysis tools (e.g. Python pandas). We have a new R library for working with Data Packages, and we're looking for feedback on it: github.com/frictionlessdata/datapackage-r – Dan Fowler Jul 14 '16 at 15:44

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