pins

Overview

You can use the pins package to:

• Pin remote resources locally.
• Discover new resources across different boards.
• Share resources in local folders, with RStudio Connect, on S3, and more.

Installation

# Install the released version from CRAN:
install.packages("pins")

Usage

To begin using the pins package, you must create a board. A good place to start is the local board, which stores pins in a local directory. Here I use a temporary board, so that you can run these examples without messing up the other data you might have pinned:

library(pins)

b <- board_temp()
b
#> Pin board <pins_board_local>
#> Path: '/tmp/RtmpPhF1aa/pins-22ee6a395d22'
#> With 0 pins: ''

Next you need to store some data in that board with pin_write():

b %>% pin_write(head(mtcars), "mtcars")
b
#> Pin board <pins_board_local>
#> Path: '/tmp/RtmpPhF1aa/pins-22ee6a395d22'
#> With 1 pins: 'mtcars'

Later, you can retrieve that data with pin_read():

b %>% pin_read("mtcars")
#>                    mpg cyl disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
#> Mazda RX4         21.0   6  160 110 3.90 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
#> Mazda RX4 Wag     21.0   6  160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4
#> Datsun 710        22.8   4  108  93 3.85 2.320 18.61  1  1    4    1
#> Hornet 4 Drive    21.4   6  258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44  1  0    3    1
#> Hornet Sportabout 18.7   8  360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02  0  0    3    2
#> Valiant           18.1   6  225 105 2.76 3.460 20.22  1  0    3    1

This can be convenient when working locally, but the real power of pins comes when you use a shared board, because because the writer and reader can be different people (or automated processes).

For example, if you use RStudio Connect, you can pin data to shared board:

b <- board_rsconnect()
b %>% pin_write(tidy_sales_data, "sales-summary")
#> Saving to hadley/sales-summary

And then someone else (or an automated Rmd report) can read it:

b <- board_rsconnect()
b %>% pin_read("hadley/sales-summary")

You can easily control who gets to see it using the RStudio Connection permissions pane.

As well as RStudio connect, you can share your pins:

• In shared folders: board_folder().
• On GitHub: board_github().
• In Microsoft Azure’s storage: board_azure().
• On Amazon’s S3: board_s3().