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The OpenRepGrid R package is able to read files from different other grid programs as well as standard formats (i. e. .txt, .xlsx). All import functions follow the same naming scheme. They start with the word import followed by the program the file is imported from, e.g. Gridstat. Hence the function to import a Gridstat file is called importGridstat.

Loading OpenRepGrid files

Microsoft Excel files

You can define a grid file using Excel. The .xlsx file has to be in a fixed format. See an example of a correct file below. The first row contains the minimum of the rating scale (red), the names of the elements (green) and the maximum of the rating scale (red). Below, every row contains the left construct pole (blue), the ratings (black) and the right construct pole (blue). The rightmost columns (purple) is optional and contains the preferred pole. Allowed values are left, right, none or an empty cell.

The OpenRepGrid package comes with several sample Excel files. If you have Excel installed, you can try opening the sample file grid_01.xlsx as follows.

file <- system.file("extdata", "grid_01.xlsx", package = "OpenRepGrid") # path to sample file
browseURL(file) # may not work on all systems

You can import the sample file as follows:

x <- importExcel(file)

If ax Excel file contains mutliple sheet with grid data (grid_03.xlsx has three sheets), you can import them like so.

file <- system.file("extdata", "grid_03.xlsx", package = "OpenRepGrid") # path to sample file
x <- importExcel(file, sheet = 1:3) # indexes or sheet names to import

.txt files

If you do not have Excel installed, you can define a grid using a text editor and by saving it as a .txt file. The .txt file has to be in a fixed format. There are three mandatory blocks each starting and ending with a predefined tag in uppercase letters. The first block starts with ELEMENTS and ends with⁠END ELEMENTS⁠. It contains one element per line. The other mandatory blocks are CONSTRUCTS and RATINGS (see below). In the block containing the constructs the left and right pole are separated by a colon (:). To define missing values use NA. The block PREFERRED is optional. Each line indicated the preferred construct pole. Allowed values are left, right, none (no pole preferred), and NA (unknown). The block RANGE is optional but recommended. It gives the rating scale range defined by two numbers. The order of the blocks is arbitrary. All text outside the blocks is discarded and can be used for comments.

---------------- sample .txt file -------------------

Note: anything outside the tag pairs is discarded

ELEMENTS
element 1
element 2
element 3
END ELEMENTS

CONSTRUCTS
left pole 1 : right pole 1
left pole 2 : right pole 2
left pole 3 : right pole 3
left pole 4 : right pole 4
END CONSTRUCTS

PREFERRED
left
left
right
none
END PREFERRED

RATINGS
1 3 2
4 1 1
1 4 4
3 1 1
END RATINGS

RANGE
1 4
END RANGE

------------------ end of file ------------------

To load the .txt file and save it into the object x type the following code to the R console.

x <- importTxt("example.txt")

You have to make sure, that the file exists in the current working directory. If not you either have to specify the whole path to the file or you must change the R working directory. A sample .txt file is also contained in the package. The OpenRepGrid package comes with an sample .txt file. You can load it as follows.

file <- system.file("extdata", "grid_01.txt", package = "OpenRepGrid")
x <- importTxt(file)

To open the sample .txt file try:

browseURL(file) # may not work on all systems

Convert a dataframe into a grid

Sometimes, you may want to convert data you loaded elsewhere into a repgrid. A dataframe is a central R data structure and can easily be converted into a repgrid object using importDataframe. Please have a look at the docs for details (?importDataframe). The package comes with several sample dataframes, for example, df_element_columns. You can import it as follows.

importDataframe(df_element_columns)

Import files from other grid programs

To import from other grid programs works the same as importing a .txt file. Either you specify the file name if it resides in the current R working directory, you supply the whole file path if it is not in the current directory.

Gridcor

x <- importGridcor("gridcor.dat") # file in current R working directory

Gridstat

x <- importGridstat("gridstat.dat") # file in current R working directory

GridSuite

x <- importGridsuite("gridsuite.xml") # file in current R working directory

sci:vesco

x <- importScivesco("scivesco.scires") # file in current R working directory

Saving grids

OpenRepGrid can currently save grids in several formats. Either as a .txt file or as an R data object.

Excel file

The most convenient format is probably an Excel file. You can save one or more grids to Excel using saveAsExcel.

saveAsExcel(boeker, file = "boeker.xlsx") # save it to the file "boeker.xlsx"

You can save a list of grids to several sheets as follows.

l <- list(boeker, bell2010)
saveAsExcel(l, file = "grids.xlsx") # save it to the file "boeker.xlsx"

.txt file

To save a grid as a .txt file use the function saveAsTxt. It will save the grid as a .txt file in format used by OpenRepGrid. This file format can also easily be edited by hand (see importTxt for a description).

saveAsTxt(boeker, "boeker.txt") # save it to the file "boeker.txt"

R data object

Another option is to save the grid as an RData object. This is done by using the function save.

save(boeker, file = "boeker.RData") # save it to the file "boeker.RData"