The goal of boxes is to provide a convenient way to store R objects or
arbitrary files (plus additional notes) and retrieve them again later.
To use the package, you need to know a few terms:
box: A container to store things. Things can be R objects or files.item: Anything stored inside a box.pack: Adding an item to a box.pick: Retrieving an item from a box.
Boxes are stored on your disk. Hence, anything put into it will remain there until you delete the box. Technically, each box is a separate SQLite database. You can create as many boxes as you need.
You can install the dev version of boxes like so:
devtools::install_github("markheckmann/boxes")Load package and show existings boxes. A box with your username exists by default.
library(boxes)
boxes()
# # A tibble: 1 × 6
# name path size n_objects modified created
# <chr> <fs::path> <fs:> <int> <dttm> <dttm>
# 1 markheckma… …ckmann.db 12K 3 2024-03-26 14:41:29 2024-03-25 13:50:49Create a new box and see that it is empty.
box_create("test")
# ℹ Activating box test
box_active()
# [1] "test"
box()
# # A tibble: 0 × 6
# # ℹ 6 variables: id <chr>, object <blob>, info <chr>, tags <chr>, class <chr>,
# # changed <dttm>Add a new object to the box.
pack(mtcars, "my_data", "Data to keep for later")
box()
# # A tibble: 1 × 6
# id object info tags class changed
# <chr> <blob> <chr> <chr> <chr> <dttm>
# 1 my_data <raw 1.43 kB> Data to keep for later "" data.f… 2024-03-26 14:47:18Retrieve an object from a box and remove it.
x <- pick("my_data")
identical(x, mtcars)
# [1] TRUE
remove("my_data")Check if item is gone and delete box.
box()
# # A tibble: 0 × 6
# # ℹ 6 variables: id <chr>, object <blob>, info <chr>, tags <chr>, class <chr>,
# # changed <dttm>
box_delete("test")
boxes()
# # A tibble: 1 × 6
# name path size n_objects modified created
# <chr> <fs::path> <fs:> <int> <dttm> <dttm>
# 1 markheckma… …ckmann.db 12K 3 2024-03-26 14:41:29 2024-03-25 13:50:49