output: github_document

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  fig.path = "README-"
)

readMDTable

readMDTable helps convert raw markdown tables from a string, file, or URL to tibbles.

Many sites (like GitHub) convert markdown tables into HTML tables, making both available. See the vignette Benchmarking Against rvest to help determine if you should use readMDTable or rvest.

Installation

Install the latest CRAN release with:

install.packages("readMDTable")

Install the development version from GitHub using pak:

pak::pkg_install("jrdnbradford/readMDTable")

or devtools:

devtools::install_github("jrdnbradford/readMDTable")

Usage

devtools::load_all()

If you have a string, file, or URL whose entire content is just a markdown table, you should use read_md_table which will return a tibble.

If the string, file, or URL is a markdown file that has other content besides just a table or tables, such as headings, paragraphs, etc, you should use extract_md_tables which will parse the file and return a tibble or list of tibbles.

From a File

Read in an example markdown table from the package:

mtcars_file <- read_md_table_example("mtcars.md")

read_md_table(mtcars_file)

Read in an example markdown file that has multiple tables as well as headings and paragraphs:

mtcars_file <- read_md_table_example("mtcars-split.md")

extract_md_tables(mtcars_file, show_col_types = FALSE)

From a String

read_md_table("| len | supp | dose |\n|---|---|---|\n| 4.2 | VC | 0.5 |")

From a URL

read_md_table("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jrdnbradford/readMDTable/main/inst/extdata/iris.md")

extract_md_tables("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jrdnbradford/readMDTable/main/inst/extdata/ToothGrowth.md")

Warnings and Messy Data

read_md_table will throw warnings if there are potential issues with the markdown table. In many cases it will still correctly read in the messy data:

read_md_table(
"  | Name   | Age |            City        | Date   |
|-------|-----|-------------|------------|
  | Alice |      30 |           | 2021/01/08 |
  | Bob          | 25  | Los Angeles | 2023/07/22      
  | Carol | 27       | Chicago     |      |"
)

extract_md_tables may fail to recognize markdown tables with improper formatting.