Converting file formats using the rio package
As we saw in the previous recipe, Rio is an R package developed by Thomas J. Leeper which makes the import and export of data really easy. You can refer to the previous recipe for more on its core functionalities and logic.
Besides the import() and export() functions, Rio also offers a really well-conceived and straightforward file conversion facility through the convert() function, which we are going to leverage in this recipe.
Getting ready
First of all, we need to install and make the rio package available by running the following code:
install.packages("rio")
library(rio)
In the following example, we are going to import the world_gdp_data dataset from a local .csv file. This dataset is provided within the RStudio project related to this book, in the data folder.
You can download it by authenticating your account at http://packtpub.com.
How to do it...
- The first step is to convert the file from the
.csvformat to the.jsonformat:convert("world_gdp_data.csv", "world_gdp_data.json")This will create a new file without removing the original one.
- The next step is to remove the original file:
file.remove("world_gdp_data.csv")
There's more...
As fully illustrated within the Rio vignette (which you can find at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rio/vignettes/rio.html), the following formats are supported for import and export:
Since rio is still a growing package, I strongly suggest that you follow its development on its GitHub repository, where you will easily find out when new formats are added, at https://github.com/leeper/rio.