Import data from a file (TXT, CSV, Excel, SPSS, Stata, ...) or clipboard.

Import data from a file, with format automatically judged from file extension. This function is inspired by rio::import() and has several modifications. Its purpose is to avoid using lots of read_xxx() functions in your code and to provide one tidy function for data import.

It supports many file formats (local or URL) and uses the corresponding R functions:

• Plain text (.txt, .csv, .csv2, .tsv, .psv), using data.table::fread()

• Excel (.xls, .xlsx), using readxl::read_excel()

• SPSS (.sav), using haven::read_sav() or foreign::read.spss()

• Stata (.dta), using haven::read_dta() or foreign::read.dta()

• R objects (.rda, .rdata, .RData), using base::load()

• R serialized objects (.rds), using base::readRDS()

• Clipboard (on Windows and Mac OS), using clipr::read_clip_tbl()

• Other formats, using rio::import()

Usage

import(
  file,
  encoding = NULL,
  header = "auto",
  sheet = NULL,
  range = NULL,
  pkg = c("haven", "foreign"),
  value.labels = FALSE,
  as = "data.frame",
  verbose = FALSE
)

Arguments

file

File name (with extension). If unspecified, then data will be imported from clipboard.

encoding

File encoding. Defaults to NULL. Options: "UTF-8", "GBK", "CP936", etc.

If you find messy code for Chinese text in the imported data, it is usually effective to set encoding="UTF-8".

header

Does the first row contain column names (TRUE or FALSE)? Defaults to "auto".

sheet

[Only for Excel] Excel sheet name (or sheet number). Defaults to the first sheet. Ignored if the sheet is specified via range.

range

[Only for Excel] Excel cell range. Defaults to all cells in a sheet. You may specify it as range="A1:E100" or range="Sheet1!A1:E100".

pkg

[Only for SPSS & Stata] Use which R package to read SPSS (.sav) or Stata (.dta) data file? Defaults to "haven". You may also use "foreign".

Notably, "haven" may be preferred because it is more robust to non-English characters and can also keep variable labels (descriptions) from SPSS.

value.labels

[Only for SPSS & Stata] Convert variables with value labels into R factors with those levels? Defaults to FALSE.

as

Class of the imported data. Defaults to "data.frame". Ignored if the file is an R data object (.rds, .rda, .rdata, .RData).

Options:

• data.frame: "data.frame", "df", "DF"

• data.table: "data.table", "dt", "DT"

• tbl_df: "tibble", "tbl_df", "tbl"

verbose

Print data information? Defaults to FALSE.

Value

A data object (default class is data.frame).

See also

export

Examples

if (FALSE) {

  # Import data from system clipboard
  data = import()  # read from clipboard (on Windows and Mac OS)

  # If you have an Excel file named "mydata.xlsx"
  export(airquality, file="mydata.xlsx")

  # Import data from a file
  data = import("mydata.xlsx")  # default: data.frame
  data = import("mydata.xlsx", as="data.table")
}