The save() and load() functions

The functions save(), load(), will save and load files to and from R standard file types .rsa. The .rda files allow a user to save their R data structures such as vectors, matrices, and data frames. These files are automatically compressed, with user options for additional compression.

The save() function will save the data frame df into the file df.rda, in the current working directory.

save(df, file="df.rda")

The load() command will place the objects into the global environment:

load("df.rda")

The saveRDS() function saves the object without preserving the object name. This is useful when you want to choose the name of the object.

saveRDS(df, file="df.Rda")

The readRDS() function reads the supplied file and creates a new object. The original name has not been preserved.

df2 <- readRDS(file="df.Rda")

knitr::kable(
  zwin1[1:7, ], caption = 'A subset of data.'
)

Saving data objects to a JSON file

Often, I need to transfer data to other software systems or client wish to provide data to other departments for use in their systems which use proprietary data formats. JSON is one format that is commonly required. The following code will export R objects to a JSON file.

library(readr)
library(jsonlite)

df %>% 
    toJSON() %>%
    write_lines(path)

Here the toJSON() function from the jsonlite package is used to convert an R data frame into the JSON format. The write_lines() function then writes the object to disk file.