The R-Podcast Episode 6: Importing Data from External Sources

In this episode: Listener feedback and importing data from external sources into R. We dive into the basics of importing delimited text files using read.table and its varients. We also discuss recommendations for importing MS Excel spreadsheet files, relational databases such as MySQL, data from HTML tables, and files produced by other statistical computing packages. If you are interested in providing a listner tip about R in audio format, please call the voicemail hotline at +1-269-849-9780 or record a short mp3 or ogg audio clip and send it to theRcast(at)gmail.com . Hope you enjoy the episode!

The following resources are mentioned in this episode:

• R Data Import/Export Manual: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-data.html
• XLConnect Package: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/XLConnect/index.html
• XLConnect Website: http://miraisolutions.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/xlconnect-0-1-8/
• RMySQL Package: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RMySQL/
• Accessing MySQL through R: http://playingwithr.blogspot.com/2011/05/accessing-mysql-through-r.html
• XML Package: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/XML/index.html
• foreign Package: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/foreign/index.html
• sas7bdat Package: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sas7bdat/index.html
• sas7bdat on GitHub: https://github.com/biostatmatt/sas7bdat
• ESPN NHL playoff statistics table: http://espn.go.com/nhl/statistics/team/_/stat/scoring/year/2012/seasontype/3
• MythTV: http://www.mythtv.org/
• R script used in this episode: https://github.com/thercast/importing-data/blob/master/importing-data-basics.R
• Theme music provided by WillRock from the Return All Robots Remix Album at ocremix.org
• The Closing theme is entitled Crysis Crystal and provided by K-wix from the Mega Man 9: Back in Blue album at ocremix.org

Episode 6 Time Stamps

00:00 The R-Podcast #006 Importing Data from External Sources
00:34 Introduction
01:46 Listener Feedback
07:45 Description of delimited text files
09:18 Using read.table and key arguments
18:17 R Data Import-Export Manual
19:10 Importing spreadsheet data considerations
21:10 XLConnect package advantages
25:20 Importing HTML tables using XML package
33:55 Using RMySQL with MySQL databases
43:52 Data from other statistical software
44:18 The foreign package
45:45 sas7bdat package
49:13 Wrapping up: subscribe to the podcast, theRcast@gmail.com, + 1-269-849-9780
53:54 End