Setting a cache directory

Spatial data from the US Census Bureau can get very big - sometimes hundreds of megabytes in size. By default, tigris functions download data from the US Census Bureau's website - but this can get tiresome if downloading the same large datasets over and over. To resolve this, tigris includes an option to cache downloaded data on a user's computer for future use, meaning that files only have to be downloaded from the Census website once. In this exercise, you'll get acquainted with the caching functionality in tigris.

This exercise is part of the course

Analyzing US Census Data in R

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Exercise instructions

Use a simulated version of the tigris_cache_dir() function to set a hypothetical cache directory.
Set the tigris_use_cache option to TRUE to tell tigris to cache shapefiles.
Use getOption() to check that you've modified the cache option correctly.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Set the cache directory
___("Your preferred cache directory path would go here")

# Set the tigris_use_cache option
options(___ = ___)

# Check to see that you've modified the option correctly
___("tigris_use_cache")

Edit and Run Code