rmarkdown Audience Template

rstats / rmarkdown

Objective:

When working on an rmarkdown project I often have different types of ‘customers’ for the output. Here is one way to handle those cases using parameters.

There are 3 parts to making this work:

  1. The YAML for the rmarkdown needs to include a params section with output reciever types
  2. An ‘r chunk’ that sets the default for subsequent chunks to have code/output shown
  3. Apply the appropriate logic for echo to each chunk (default here is FALSE)

Step 1: (YAML)

Our audience parameter has:

  • label of ‘Audience’
  • default value of Customer
  • input type of select
  • choices of (Analyst, Customer)
title: rmarkdown Audience Template  
author: Jason Taylor  
date: '2019-07-15'  
slug: rmarkdown-audience-template    
draft: FALSE  
categories:  
  - Original  
tags:  
  - rstats  
  - rmarkdown  
topics: []  
description: ''  
params:  
  audience:  
    label: "Audience"  
    value: Customer  
    input: select  
    choices: [Analyst, Customer]  
editor_options:   
  chunk_output_type: console

Step 2: (Chunk defaults)

Load Libraries and Setup Global Options:

  • knitr::opts_chunk$set ‘echo’ defines if a chunk should print the code when rendered.
  • Here we set the default to FALSE by:
    • default audience parameter above as ‘Customer’
    • if_else statement in the setup chunk defining echo to be TRUE when the ‘Analyst’ type is chosen
library.list <- c("tidyverse", "mobstr", "here")
lapply(library.list, require, character.only = TRUE)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  echo = if_else(params$audience == "Analyst", TRUE, FALSE),
  warning = if_else(params$audience == "Analyst", TRUE, FALSE),
  include = TRUE,
  comment = NA)

Step 3: (Apply)

  • By default ‘r chunks’ will not echo their code since the paramater defaults to ‘Customer’
  • If you want to show all ‘r chunks’ choose ‘Analyst’ Audience type when you knit
  • If you want to echo a specific ‘r chunk’ regardless of the parameter selection during knit you can use the chunk option echo = TRUE like so… (# added to show the chunk begin and end)

Example ‘r chunk’ with ‘echo = TRUE’

# ```{r echo = TRUE}
head(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

# ```

If you have suggestions for studies, improvements for rstats code, or any other feedback please reach out with the contact links on the sidebar

Best,

Jason