This help file outlines which software you can use to access EconData.
Excel Add-In
Our EconData Excel Add-In pulls the latest, up-to-date time series data (from any of the datasets supplied in EconData) into your Excel workbooks. The series will be structured as two columns with some headers: the left-hand column gives the date and the right-had column gives the values. You can, for example, overwrite previous data pulls to update graphs or quantitative models that are linked to that range.
To use the Excel Add-In, first create an account on www.EconData.co.za, then, in Excel, go to the Insert ribbon → Add-ins → Get Add-ins → search for “EconData” → add the app → and sign in to the app, using your EconData credentials.
For more guidance, please see our tutorial.
R package ☍
The R package can be installed with the following sequence of commands, in R:
library(devtools)
install_github("coderaanalytics/econdatar")
library(econdatar)
R environment variables
In order to fully automate your processes, please ensure that you save
ECONDATA_CREDENTIALS="username;password"
as a line in a .Renviron text file in your user Documents folder (Windows) or in ~ on Unix.
Pulling data in R
An example of how you can pull structured data, using the read_econdata() function, is as follows. The data are provided in two tables in a list (the data table and the meta-data table), which can be linked with the data key. The data table contains the time period, values, and the data key (a concise encoding of the concept). The meta-data table gives more detail about each data key.
library(econdatar)
data_raw <- read_econdata(id = "POPULATION_DATA_REG",
releasedescription = "latest",
version = "latest",
tidy = TRUE,
wide = FALSE,
compact = FALSE )
str(data_raw)
You thus need to use an ID when calling the data. We outline the IDs in Available Data.
