write_package: Write a Data Package to disk

In frictionless: Read and Write Frictionless Data Packages

Write a Data Package to disk

Description

Writes a Data Package and its related Data Resources to disk as a datapackage.json and CSV files.

Usage

write_package(package, directory, compress = FALSE)

Arguments

package	Data Package object, as returned by read_package() or create_package().
directory	Path to local directory to write files to.
compress	If TRUE, data of added resources will be gzip compressed before being written to disk (e.g. deployments.csv.gz).

Value

package invisibly, as written to file.

Writing data to CSV files

write_package() will write data to CSV files depending on how these are attached to the Data Resource:

• Data frame:

  add_resource(package, "media", data = df)
  

  Data are written to a CSV file in directory using readr::write_csv(). The CSV file will have the same name as the resource, overwriting any existing file with the same name. Use compress = TRUE to gzip the CSV file.

• One or more paths to local CSV files in a different directory:

  add_resource(package, "media", data = "other-directory/media.csv")
  

  CSV files are copied to directory, overwriting existing files with the same name.

• One or more paths to local CSV files in the same directory:

  add_resource(package, "media", data = "directory/media.csv")
  

  CSV files are left as is (no overwrite). This allows you to read and write a datapackage.json to the same directory, without altering the CSV files of resources you did not manipulate.

• One or more URLs to CSV files:

  add_resource(package, "media", data = "https://example.org/media.csv")
  

  Files are not downloaded.

• Mix of URLs and paths to CSV files:

  add_resource(
    package, "media",
    data = c("https://example.org/media.csv", "media.csv")
  )
  

  Remote CSV files are downloaded to directory, overwriting existing files with the same name. Local CSV files are handled as described above.

• Inline data: No files are written.

In all above cases path is added or updated to the new file location(s) when appropriate.

Examples

# Load the example Data Package from disk
package <- read_package(
  system.file("extdata", "v1", "datapackage.json", package = "frictionless")
)

package

# Write the (unchanged) Data Package to disk
write_package(package, directory = "my_directory")

# Check files
list.files("my_directory")

# No files written for the "observations" resource, since those are all URLs.
# No files written for the "media" resource, since it has inline data.

# Clean up (don't do this if you want to keep your files)
unlink("my_directory", recursive = TRUE)

frictionless documentation built on July 31, 2026, 9:06 a.m.