Learn How to Write SQL From R
Written by Matt Dancho
This article is part of a R-Tips Weekly, a weekly video tutorial that shows you step-by-step how to do common R coding tasks.
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Writing SQL from R
We’re going to generate SQL from R using 3 key packages:
DBI
- For connecting to & working with databasesRSQLite
- For working with the SQLite-variety of databasetidyverse
- Gives usdbplyr
- the database-backened to dplyr - FOR FREE!! OMG!
Step 1: Connect to database
Use DBI to make a connection
DBI has the dbConnect()
function. Let’s use this to establish a connection with our SQL database.
Examine the connection. You should see a connection object has been created and the SQL database has one table named “MPG”.
Step 2: Write Dplyr, Generate SQL
Use the dbplyr backend to auto-magically create SQL for us.
DBI has the show_query()
function we can use to generate SQL…
…and here’s the result!
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