R/export.R

In rio: A Swiss-Army Knife for Data I/O

#' @rdname export
#' @title Export
#' @description Write data.frame to a file
#' @param x A data frame or matrix to be written into a file. Exceptions to this rule are that `x` can be a list of data frames if the output file format is an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods, .fods), Excel .xlsx workbook, .Rdata file, or HTML file, or a variety of R objects if the output file format is RDS or JSON. See examples.) To export a list of data frames to multiple files, use [export_list()] instead.
#' @param file A character string naming a file. Must specify `file` and/or `format`.
#' @param format An optional character string containing the file format, which can be used to override the format inferred from `file` or, in lieu of specifying `file`, a file with the symbol name of `x` and the specified file extension will be created. Must specify `file` and/or `format`. Shortcuts include: \dQuote{,} (for comma-separated values), \dQuote{;} (for semicolon-separated values), \dQuote{|} (for pipe-separated values), and \dQuote{dump} for [base::dump()].
#' @param \dots Additional arguments for the underlying export functions. This can be used to specify non-standard arguments. See examples.
#' @return The name of the output file as a character string (invisibly).
#' @details This function exports a data frame or matrix into a file with file format based on the file extension (or the manually specified format, if `format` is specified).
#'
#' The output file can be to a compressed directory, simply by adding an appropriate additional extensiont to the `file` argument, such as: \dQuote{mtcars.csv.tar}, \dQuote{mtcars.csv.zip}, or \dQuote{mtcars.csv.gz}.
#'
#' `export` supports many file formats. See the documentation for the underlying export functions for optional arguments that can be passed via `...`
#'
#' \itemize{
#'     \item Comma-separated data (.csv), using [data.table::fwrite()]
#'     \item Pipe-separated data (.psv), using [data.table::fwrite()]
#'     \item Tab-separated data (.tsv), using [data.table::fwrite()]
#'     \item SAS (.sas7bdat), using [haven::write_sas()].
#'     \item SAS XPORT (.xpt), using [haven::write_xpt()].
#'     \item SPSS (.sav), using [haven::write_sav()]
#'     \item SPSS compressed (.zsav), using [haven::write_sav()]
#'     \item Stata (.dta), using [haven::write_dta()]. Note that variable/column names containing dots (.) are not allowed and will produce an error.
#'     \item Excel (.xlsx), using [writexl::write_xlsx()]. `x` can also be a list of data frames; the list entry names are used as sheet names.
#'     \item R syntax object (.R), using [base::dput()] (by default) or [base::dump()] (if `format = 'dump'`)
#'     \item Saved R objects (.RData,.rda), using [base::save()]. In this case, `x` can be a data frame, a named list of objects, an R environment, or a character vector containing the names of objects if a corresponding `envir` argument is specified.
#'     \item Serialized R objects (.rds), using [base::saveRDS()]. In this case, `x` can be any serializable R object.
#'     \item Serialized R objects (.qs), using [qs::qsave()], which is
#'     significantly faster than .rds. This can be any R
#'     object (not just a data frame).
#'     \item "XBASE" database files (.dbf), using [foreign::write.dbf()]
#'     \item Weka Attribute-Relation File Format (.arff), using [foreign::write.arff()]
#'     \item Fixed-width format data (.fwf), using [utils::write.table()] with `row.names = FALSE`, `quote = FALSE`, and `col.names = FALSE`
#'     \item gzip comma-separated data (.csv.gz), using [utils::write.table()] with `row.names = FALSE`
#'     \item [CSVY](https://github.com/csvy) (CSV with a YAML metadata header) using [data.table::fwrite()].
#'     \item Apache Arrow Parquet (.parquet), using [arrow::write_parquet()]
#'     \item Feather R/Python interchange format (.feather), using [arrow::write_feather()]
#'     \item Fast storage (.fst), using [fst::write.fst()]
#'     \item JSON (.json), using [jsonlite::toJSON()]. In this case, `x` can be a variety of R objects, based on class mapping conventions in this paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2805](https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2805).
#'     \item Matlab (.mat), using [rmatio::write.mat()]
#'     \item OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods, .fods), using [readODS::write_ods()] or [readODS::write_fods()].
#'     \item HTML (.html), using a custom method based on [xml2::xml_add_child()] to create a simple HTML table and [xml2::write_xml()] to write to disk.
#'     \item XML (.xml), using a custom method based on [xml2::xml_add_child()] to create a simple XML tree and [xml2::write_xml()] to write to disk.
#'     \item YAML (.yml), using [yaml::write_yaml()], default to write the content with UTF-8. Might not work on some older systems, e.g. default Windows locale for R <= 4.2.
#'     \item Clipboard export (on Windows and Mac OS), using [utils::write.table()] with `row.names = FALSE`
#' }
#'
#' When exporting a data set that contains label attributes (e.g., if imported from an SPSS or Stata file) to a plain text file, [characterize()] can be a useful pre-processing step that records value labels into the resulting file (e.g., `export(characterize(x), "file.csv")`) rather than the numeric values.
#'
#' Use [export_list()] to export a list of dataframes to separate files.
#'
#' @examples
#' ## For demo, a temp. file path is created with the file extension .csv
#' csv_file <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
#' ## .xlsx
#' xlsx_file <- tempfile(fileext = ".xlsx")
#'
#' ## create CSV to import
#' export(iris, csv_file)
#'
#' ## You can certainly export your data with the file name, which is not a variable:
#' ## import(mtcars, "car_data.csv")
#'
#' ## pass arguments to the underlying function
#' ## data.table::fwrite is the underlying function and `col.names` is an argument
#' export(iris, csv_file, col.names = FALSE)
#'
#' ## export a list of data frames as worksheets
#' export(list(a = mtcars, b = iris), xlsx_file)
#'
#' # NOT RECOMMENDED
#'
#' ## specify `format` to override default format
#' export(iris, xlsx_file, format = "csv") ## That's confusing
#' ## You can also specify only the format; in the following case
#' ## "mtcars.dta" is written [also confusing]
#'
#' ## export(mtcars, format = "stata")
#' @seealso [characterize()], [import()], [convert()], [export_list()]
#' @export
export <- function(x, file, format, ...) {
    .check_file(file, single_only = TRUE)
    if (missing(file) && missing(format)) {
        stop("Must specify 'file' and/or 'format'")
    }
    if (!missing(file)) {
        cfile <- file
        f <- find_compress(file)
        file <- f$file
        compress <- f$compress
        format <- ifelse(isFALSE(missing(format)), tolower(format), get_info(file)$input)
    } else {
        format <- .standardize_format(format)
        file <- paste0(as.character(substitute(x)), ".", format)
        compress <- NA_character_
    }
    format <- .standardize_format(format)
    outfile <- file
    if (is.matrix(x) || inherits(x, "ArrowTabular")) {
        x <- as.data.frame(x)
    }
    if (!is.data.frame(x) && !format %in% c("xlsx", "html", "rdata", "rds", "json", "qs", "fods", "ods")) {
        stop("'x' is not a data.frame or matrix", call. = FALSE)
    }
    .create_directory_if_not_exists(file = file) ## fix 347
    if (format %in% c("gz", "gzip")) {
        format <- get_info(tools::file_path_sans_ext(file, compression = FALSE))$format
    }
    class(file) <- c(paste0("rio_", format), class(file))
    .export(file = file, x = x, ...)
    if (!is.na(compress)) {
        cfile <- compress_out(cfile = cfile, filename = file, type = compress)
        unlink(file)
        return(invisible(cfile))
    }
    invisible(unclass(outfile))
}