getData() and getDat() provide an easy way to load SPSS datafiles.
getData(
filename = NULL,
file = NULL,
errorMessage = "[defaultErrorMessage]",
applyRioLabels = TRUE,
use.value.labels = FALSE,
to.data.frame = TRUE,
stringsAsFactors = FALSE,
silent = FALSE,
...
)
getDat(..., dfName = "dat", backup = TRUE)It is possible to specify a path and filename to load
here. If not specified, the default R file selection dialogue is shown.
file is still available for backward compatibility but will
eventually be phased out.
The error message that is shown if the file does not
exist or does not have the right extension; [defaultErrorMessage] is
replaced with a default error message (and can be included in longer
messages).
Whether to apply the labels supplied by Rio. This will make variables that has value labels into factors.
Only useful when reading from SPSS files: whether to read variables with value labels as factors (TRUE) or numeric vectors (FALSE).
Only useful when reading from SPSS files: whether to return a dataframe or not.
Whether to read strings as strings (FALSE) or factors (TRUE).
Whether to suppress potentially useful information.
Additional options, passed on to the function used to import the data (which depends on the extension of the file).
The name of the dataframe to create in the parent environment.
Whether to backup an object with name dfName, if one
already exists in the parent environment.
getData returns the imported dataframe, with the filename from which it was read stored in the 'filename' attribute.
getDat is a simple wrapper for getData() which creates a dataframe in
the parent environment, by default with the name 'dat'. Therefore, calling
getDat() in the console will allow the user to select a file, and the
data from the file will then be read and be available as 'dat'. If an object
with dfName (i.e. 'dat' by default) already exists, it will be backed
up with a warning. getDat() also invisibly returns the data.frame.
getData() currently can't read from LibreOffice or OpenOffice files. There doesn't seem to be a platform-independent package that allows this. Non-CRAN package ROpenOffice from OmegaHat should be able to do the trick, but fails to install (manual download and installation using https://www.omegahat.org produces "ERROR: dependency 'Rcompression' is not available for package 'ROpenOffice'" - and manual download and installation of RCompression produces "Please define LIB_ZLIB; ERROR: configuration failed for package 'Rcompression'"). If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
if (FALSE) {
### Open a dialogue to read an SPSS file
getData();
}