render_book: Render multiple R Markdown documents into a book

In bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown

Render multiple R Markdown documents into a book

Description

Render multiple R Markdown files under the current working directory into a book. It can be used in the RStudio IDE (specifically, the knit field in YAML). The preview_chapter() function is a wrapper of render_book(preview = TRUE).

Usage

render_book(
  input = ".",
  output_format = NULL,
  ...,
  clean = TRUE,
  envir = parent.frame(),
  clean_envir = !interactive(),
  output_dir = NULL,
  new_session = NA,
  preview = FALSE,
  config_file = "_bookdown.yml"
)

preview_chapter(..., envir = parent.frame())

Arguments

input	A directory, an input filename or multiple filenames. For a directory, ‘index.Rmd’ will be used if it exists in this (book) project directory. For filenames, if preview = TRUE, only files specified in this argument are rendered, otherwise all R Markdown files specified by the book are rendered.
output_format, ..., clean, envir	Arguments to be passed to rmarkdown::render(). For preview_chapter(), ... is passed to render_book(). See rmarkdown::render() and the bookdown reference book for details on how output formatting options are set from YAML or parameters supplied by the user when calling render_book().
clean_envir	This argument has been deprecated and will be removed in future versions of bookdown.
output_dir	The output directory. If NULL, a field named output_dir in the configuration file ‘_bookdown.yml’ will be used (possibly not specified, either, in which case a directory name ‘_book’ will be used).
new_session	Whether to use new R sessions to compile individual Rmd files (if not provided, the value of the new_session option in ‘_bookdown.yml’ is used; if this is also not provided, new_session = FALSE).
preview	Whether to render and preview the input files specified by the input argument. Previewing a certain chapter may save compilation time as you actively work on this chapter, but the output may not be accurate (e.g. cross-references to other chapters will not work).
config_file	The book configuration file.

Details

There are two ways to render a book from Rmd files. The default way (new_session = FALSE) is to merge Rmd files into a single file and render this file. You can also choose to render each individual Rmd file in a new R session (new_session = TRUE).

Examples

# see https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown for the full documentation
if (file.exists("index.Rmd")) bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")
## Not run: 
# will use the default format defined in index.Rmd or _output.yml
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")
# will use the options for format defined in YAML metadata
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::pdf_book")
# If you pass an output format object, it must have all the options set
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", bookdown::pdf_book(toc = FALSE))

# will render the book in the current directory
bookdown::render_book()
# this is equivalent to
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")
# will render the book living in the specified directory
bookdown::render_book("my_book_project")

## End(Not run)

bookdown documentation built on April 15, 2025, 5:09 p.m.