| Data file type | Package | Function | Can load compressed files? | Can load files from URL? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Comma-separated values (.csv) |
readr | read_csv() (data from English-speaking countries) or read_csv2() (data from elsewhere) |
yes | yes |
Fixed-width files (usually .txt) |
readr | read_fwf() |
yes | yes |
GeoJSON (.geojson) |
sf | read_sf() |
no | yes |
GeoPackage (.gpkg) |
sf | read_sf() |
no | yes |
| Google Sheets | googlesheets4 | read_sheet() |
n/a | yes |
HTML (.htm or .html) |
xml2 | read_html() (probably used with functions from the rvest package) |
n/a | yes |
JSON (.json) |
jsonlite | read_json() |
yes | yes |
Microsoft Excel (.xlsx or .xls) |
readxl | read_excel() |
no | no |
OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) |
readODS | read_ods() |
no | yes |
R Data (.rds) |
readr | read_rds() |
n/a | yes |
SAS (.sas7bdat) |
haven | read_sas() |
yes | yes |
Shapefile (.shp) |
sf | read_sf() |
no | no |
SPSS Statistics (.sav) |
haven | read_sav() |
yes | yes |
Stata (.dta) |
haven | read_dta() |
yes | yes |
Tab-separated values (.tsv or .tab) |
readr | read_tsv() |
yes | yes |
XML (usually .xml) |
xml2 | read_xml() |
yes | yes |
Appendix A — Functions for reading data into R
R can read data in many different formats. Different functions (often from different packages) are needed to read files of different formats. These are some of the functions needed to read common types of file used in data analysis, including spatial data formats.