Build with R

Retrieve, transform, visualise, communicate, and scale data workflows with R

The core R4DEV workshop track: nine lessons from your first Quarto document to parallel computing.

Track description

This is the original R4DEV workshop: nine hands-on lessons that take you from writing your first reproducible document to scraping the web, mapping real spatial data, building a Shiny app, and parallelising your own code. Every lesson downloads real data from the web and builds something you can look at – a plot, a map, an animation, an app.

Who this is for

Analysts, researchers and students who want a practical, project-based introduction to doing data work in R rather than a syntax reference. No prior Shiny, mapping or web-scraping experience assumed.

Prerequisites

• Minimum: R and RStudio (or Positron) installed, and enough command-line/R comfort to run a script. See Start here for the install checklist.
• Helpful: basic familiarity with data frames (reading a CSV, filtering rows) speeds up lessons 2 onward.
• Lessons build on each other loosely (later lessons assume you can write a dplyr pipe), but each is designed to also work as a standalone reference.

Lessons

1 Blogging with Quarto Write reproducible reports in Quarto and publish a live blog to Netlify. Beginner · 45 min 2 Everything in its right place Pull real data from an API and build interactive charts with ggplot2, plotly and ggiraph. Beginner · 90 min 3 Data from words Turn raw text into tidy data and run sentiment and topic analysis. Intermediate · 90 min 4 Making data move Turn a static plot into an animation that shows change over time. Intermediate · 75 min 5 Mapping despair in the USA Build static and interactive maps of real spatial data with ggplot2 and leaflet. Intermediate · 90 min 6 Just take it Scrape data directly from web pages when no API exists. Intermediate · 60 min 7 Make it shine Build an interactive Shiny app and deploy it to the web. Advanced · 90 min 8 Smart reports Generate a batch of parameterised reports from one template. Intermediate · 45 min 9 Do it well, do it fast Replace for-loops with purrr, then parallelise the same code with mirai. Advanced · 45 min

Estimated total time: ~10.5 hours across 9 lessons (durations are rounded active-work estimates, not automated reading time).

Start with lesson 1: Blogging with Quarto →