R loop over write.xlsx()

Question

I want to export a couple of data frames to an excel file using the function write.xlsx() from openxlsx. So, for example the following:

library(openxlsx)
x <- c(1,2,3)
for (i in x) {
  name <- paste("sheet", i, sep = "")
  assign(name, data.frame(1:4, 2:3))
  path <- paste("/some_directory/",name,".xlsx" , sep = "")
  write.xlsx(name, file = path)
}

This does create three different data frames with the values 1 to 4 and 2 to 3, those have the right names, it also creates three different excel files with the right names, but the excel files only contain the name instead of the values from the dataframe. Does anyone know how to change that?

Answer 1

you need to keep your data.frame in a variable:

library(glue)
library(openxlsx)
x <- c(1,2,3)
for (i in x) {
  name <- paste("sheet", i, sep = "")

  df <- data.frame(1:4, 2:3) # This step is missing in your example

  assign(name, df)
  path <- glue("/some_directory/{name}.xlsx", name = name)
  write.xlsx(df, file = path)
}
``