Data Import and Export

Both data import and export for Rflow is managed through CSV files as these are the most widely used format for data storage and exchange. Rflow uses the read.csv() and write.csv() functions from base R to read and write CSV files.

Input CSV node

This node calls R’s read.csv() function to import data from a CSV file. The original R function is part of the utils package which is included in base R, so no additional packages are required to use this node. Other variations include read.csv2() which is used for CSV files that use a semicolon as the field separator and a comma as the decimal point, and read.table() which is a more general function that can read tabular data in a variety of formats. These latter two functions are not currently supported in Rflow, but may be added in future releases.

Output CSV node

This node calls R’s write.csv() function to export data to a CSV file. Rflow uses the standard write.csv() which uses comma separation between columns and a period as the decimal point. The write.csv2() function is not currently supported in Rflow, but may be added in future releases.