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rpdf-generationreportingknitrrdoc

How do I programmatically automate .rmd file to PDF using knitr?

I can produce my reports rather quickly thanks to knitr and RDoc; however I want to streamline my process a little more by automatically generating the documents in my R script.

Do ya'lls have any solutions or resources I could use to further investigate to create a solution?

Solution

  • To automate a knitr job you can use something like the command line below.

    Rscript -e "library(knitr); knit2pdf('myRnw.Rnw')"

    Put that in a .sh file and you can cron tab it all you want.

    Explanation (aka the same again in English):

    • Rscript is the script-running version of R
    • Rscript -e "myexpression();" is the expression runner, it runs everything in the quotes. See Rscript --help for more detail.
    • library(knitr) -- well, you can't knit without knowing how, obviously neither can R
    • knit2pdf( '/path/to/file', ...) lookup the ? help on the function or search for more examples online.