Introduction
Connecting data allows users to establish links between R and external data systems, enabling efficient data retrieval and manipulation for reporting purposes.
To connect R to a PostgreSQL database, follow these steps to set up your environment and establish a connection using the RPostgres or RPostgreSQL packages. This guide assumes you have PostgreSQL installed and running, along with R and RStudio.
Step-by-step connection guide
Install the necessary packages required to connect to PostgreSQL.
Load the packages into your R session.
Establishing a connection to your PostgreSQL database using the following code.
(Note, above are the details of my PostgreSQL database locally hosted)
Next, verify if your connection is successful by listing the tables in your database using the following code.
Executing the above code, will list all the tables in my database as shown below.
With connection verified, you can now execute SQL commands directly from R. For example, I can retrieve data from the table ‘orders’ using the following code.
Executing this will retrieve data from the table orders as shown below.
Once you’re done with your database operations, close your connection as follows.
Conclusion
Connecting R to a PostgreSQL database allows you to leverage powerful data manipulation capabilities directly within your statistical analysis workflows. By following these steps, you can easily set up your environment and start interacting with your PostgreSQL databases from R.
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