rddocs: Open Dataset Documentation

In Rdatasets: Access Datasets from the Rdatasets Archive

Open Dataset Documentation

Description

Opens the documentation for a dataset from Rdatasets as an HTML page using getOption("viewer") or the Rstudio viewer.

Usage

rddocs(dataset, package = NULL)

Arguments

dataset	String. Name of the dataset to download from the Rdatasets archive. Use rdsearch() to search available datasets.
package	String. Package name that originally published the data. If NULL, the function will attempt to automatically detect the package by searching for an exact match in the Rdatasets index.

Details

The function attempts to open the documentation in the following order:

1. RStudio's built-in viewer (if rstudioapi is available)

2. The viewer specified in getOption("viewer")

3. The default browser specified in getOption("browser")

To control which viewer is used, you can set the following options:

• options(viewer = function(url) { ... }) - Set a custom viewer function

• options(browser = "firefox") - Set the default browser (used as fallback)

If no viewer is available, the function will stop with an error message.

Value

Invisibly returns NULL. The function's primary purpose is to open the dataset documentation in a viewer window.

Global Options

The following global options control package behavior:

• Rdatasets_cache: Logical

  • Whether to cache downloaded data and index for faster subsequent access. Default: TRUE. Please keep this option TRUE as it makes repeated access faster and avoids overloading the Rdatasets server. Only set to FALSE if local memory is severely limited.

  • Ex: 'options(Rdatasets_cache = TRUE)“

• Rdatasets_class: String

  • Output class of the returned data. One of "data.frame" (default), "tibble", or "data.table". Default: "data.frame". Requires the respective packages to be installed for "tibble" or "data.table" formats.

  • Ex: options(Rdatasets_class = "tibble")

• Rdataset_path: String.

  • Base URL for the Rdatasets archive. Default: "https://vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasets/". Advanced users can set this to use a different mirror or local copy.

  • Ex: options(Rdataset_path = "https://vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasets/")

Examples

rddocs(dataset = "Titanic", package ="Stat2Data")
rddocs("iris", "datasets")

Rdatasets documentation built on June 8, 2025, 11:48 a.m.