rOpenSci | Package for downloading shapefiles using piggyback
Reported on: May 11, 2020

Package for downloading shapefiles using piggyback

English • By Isabella Velásquez • Featuring: piggyback

rOpenSci package or resource used*

piggyback

What did you do?

I created a package called {leaidr} to use facilitate the download and use of U.S. school district shapefiles. The shapefile is over GitHub’s allowed limit of 100MB. Originally, I tried to use GitHub LFS as a way to upload the file. Unfortunately, GitHub LFS is not reproducible in that when others download the package, they wouldn’t be able to access the file.

{piggyback} allowed for easy upload of the shapefile as an R Data file to GitHub. In one of the {leaidr} functions, there is a call to download the shapefile into the user’s specified file path. From there, the user can prep and plot the shapefile according to their needs.

URL or code snippet for your use case*

https://github.com/ivelasq/leaidr https://ivelasq.rbind.io/blog/leaid-shapefiles/

Sector

non-profit

Field(s) of application

K-12, education, policy