Read a target's value from storage.

Read a target's return value from its file in _targets/objects/. For dynamic files (i.e. format = "file") the paths are returned.

Usage

tar_read(
  name,
  branches = NULL,
  meta = tar_meta(store = store),
  store = targets::tar_config_get("store")
)

Arguments

name

Symbol, name of the target to read.

branches

Integer of indices of the branches to load if the target is a pattern.

meta

Data frame of metadata from tar_meta(). tar_read() with the default arguments can be inefficient for large pipelines because all the metadata is stored in a single file. However, if you call tar_meta() beforehand and supply it to the meta argument, then successive calls to tar_read() may run much faster.

store

Character of length 1, path to the targets data store. Defaults to tar_config_get("store"), which in turn defaults to _targets/. When you set this argument, the value of tar_config_get("store") is temporarily changed for the current function call. See tar_config_get() and tar_config_set() for details about how to set the data store path persistently for a project.

Value

The target's return value from its file in _targets/objects/, or the paths to the custom files and directories if format = "file" was set.

Storage access

Several functions like tar_make(), tar_read(), tar_load(), tar_meta(), and tar_progress() read or modify the local data store of the pipeline. The local data store is in flux while a pipeline is running, and depending on how distributed computing or cloud computing is set up, not all targets can even reach it. So please do not call these functions from inside a target as part of a running pipeline. The only exception is literate programming target factories in the tarchetypes package such as tar_render() and tar_quarto().

Several functions like tar_make(), tar_read(), tar_load(), tar_meta(), and tar_progress() read or modify the local data store of the pipeline. The local data store is in flux while a pipeline is running, and depending on how distributed computing or cloud computing is set up, not all targets can even reach it. So please do not call these functions from inside a target as part of a running pipeline. The only exception is literate programming target factories in the tarchetypes package such as tar_render() and tar_quarto().

See also

Other data: tar_crew(), tar_load_everything(), tar_load_raw(), tar_load(), tar_objects(), tar_pid(), tar_process(), tar_read_raw()

Examples

if (identical(Sys.getenv("TAR_EXAMPLES"), "true")) { # for CRAN
tar_dir({ # tar_dir() runs code from a temp dir for CRAN.
tar_script(list(tar_target(x, 1 + 1)), ask = FALSE)
tar_make()
tar_read(x)
})
}