Packages

Before we start installing and loading packages, lets have a look how to view all the available packages.

Browse packages

Assign result of available.packages() function call to packages variable.

packages <- available.packages()

Now we can browse a package details.

In order to display first 3 columns from the first row, use head function.

head(rownames(packages), 3)

If you want to browse all the packages in a table, use View function.

View(packages)

Using packages

Before we start using a package, we have to intall it. Use install.packages() to install a package.

install.packages("ggplot2")

We can also install multiple packages in one line.

install.packages(c("ggplot2", "devtools"))

We need to load a package before using it. Note that all the dependendent packages will be loaded before the named package is loaded.

library(ggplot2)
library(devtools)

Available packages

Run search() function after you install a package in order to see all the available and loaded packages.

search()

The code above will display the following list of functions in the console:

> search()
 [1] ".GlobalEnv"        "package:devtools"  "package:ggplot2"   "tools:rstudio"     "package:stats"     "package:graphics"
 [7] "package:grDevices" "package:utils"     "package:datasets"  "package:methods"   "Autoloads"         "package:base"

Package details

Quick information can be obtainedby using citation() function.

citation("ggplot2")

More interesting packages

• twitterR

• rfigshare

• rplos

• rOpenSci

• RFacebook

• RGoogleMaps