Easy Data Import Using GUI File Picker and Seamless Communication Between an Excel and R

Choosing any rectangular data file using interactive GUI dialog box, and seamlessly manipulating tidy data between an 'Excel' window and R session.

The goal of ezpickr is to provide R beginners with a convenient way to pick up their data files and to easily import it as a tidy tibble form into an R environment using GUI file-picker dialogue box (through ezpickr::pick()), and to provide R users with a convenient way to open and manipulate their data objects using Excel application for a seamless data communication between an Excel window and R session through ezpickr::viewxl()).

You can alternatively use ezpickr::pick() function for choosing *.csv, *.csv2, *.tsv, *.txt, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.json, *.html, *.htm, *.php, *.pdf, *.doc, *.docx, *.rtf, *.RData, *.Rda, *.RDS, *.sav (SPSS), *.por, *.sas7bdat, *.sas7bcat, *.dta, and *.mbox files in an interactive GUI mode A file choose dialog box will be prompted.

Any additional arguments available for each file type and extension: readr::read_csv() for CSV (Comma-Separated Values) files; readr::read_csv2() for CSV2 (Semicolon-Separated Values) files; readr::read_tsv() for ‘TSV’ (Tab-Separated Values) files; readr::read_file() for ‘txt’ (plain text) files; readxl::read_excel() for ‘Excel’ files; haven::read_spss() for ‘SPSS’ files; haven::read_stata() for ‘Stata’ files; haven::read_sas() for ‘SAS’ files; textreadr::read_document() for ‘Microsoft Word’, ‘PDF’, ‘RTF’, ‘HTML’, ‘HTM’, and ‘PHP’ files; jsonlite::fromJSON() for ‘JSON’ files; mboxr::read_mbox() for ‘mbox’ files; base::readRDS() for ‘RDS’ files; base::load() for ‘RDA’ and ‘RDATA’ files.

Each corresponding function depending upon a file extension will be automatically matched and applied once you pick up your file using either the GUI-file-chooser dialog box or explicit path/to/filename.

Installation

Development Version

You can install the latest development version as follows:

if(!require(devtools)) {
install.packages("devtools")
}
 
devtools::install_github('jooyoungseo/ezpickr')

Stable Version

You can install the released version of ezpickr from CRAN with:

install.packages("ezpickr")

Example

Usage of the pick() Function

This is a basic example which shows you how to import data files:

library(ezpickr)
 
# Choosing file and saving it into a variable
## Scenario 1: Picking up a file using interactive GUI dialog box:
data <- pick() ## Please use `picko()` instead if your path/file contains any Korean characters.
 
## Scenario 2: Picking up a file using an explicit file name ("test.sav" in the example below; however, you can feed other files through this function such as *.SAS, *.DTA, *.csv, *.csv2, *.tsv, *.xlsx, *.txt, *.html, webpage URL, *.json, *.Rda, *.Rdata, and more):
data <- pick("test.sav") ## Please use `picko("test.sav")` instead if your path/file contains any Korean characters.
 
# Now you can use the imported file as a tibble data frame.
str(data)

Usage of the viewxl() Function

You can open any data.frame, tibble, matrix, table or vector from an R session into your default-set spreadsheet application window as follows:

library(ezpickr)
 
data(airquality)
str(airquality)
 
# Use `viewxl()` function to open your data object in your spreadsheet:
viewxl(airquality)
 
# Then, when necessary, you can modify the opened data in the spreadsheet and save it as a new data.
 
# You can pass a list object to the `viewxl()` function like below:
l <- list(iris = iris, mtcars = mtcars, chickwts = chickwts, quakes = quakes)
viewxl(l)
# Then, each list item will appear in your Excel window sheet by sheet.