Get Started

Establish a connection

The first step to import data from a SQL database is creating a connection to it. As Filip explained, you need different packages depending on the database you want to connect to. All of these packages do this in a uniform way, as specified in the DBI package.

dbConnect()creates a connection between your R session and a SQL database. The first argument has to be a DBIdriver object, that specifies how connections are made and how data is mapped between R and the database. Specifically for MySQL databases, you can build such a driver with RMySQL::MySQL().

If the MySQL database is a remote database hosted on a server, you'll also have to specify the following arguments in dbConnect(): dbname, host, port, user and password. Most of these details have already been provided.

This is a part of the course

“Intermediate Importing Data in R”

View Course

Exercise instructions

  • Load the DBI library, which is already installed on DataCamp's servers.
  • Edit the dbConnect() call to connect to the MySQL database. Change the port argument (3306) and user argument ("student").

Hands-on interactive exercise

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

# Load the DBI package


# Edit dbConnect() call
con <- dbConnect(RMySQL::MySQL(), 
                 dbname = "tweater", 
                 host = "courses.csrrinzqubik.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com", 
                 port = 0000,
                 user = "",
                 password = "datacamp")
Edit and Run Code

This exercise is part of the course

Intermediate Importing Data in R

IntermediateSkill Level
4.8+
11 reviews

Parse data in any format. Whether it's flat files, statistical software, databases, or data right from the web.

Start Course for Free

Many companies store their information in relational databases. The R community has also developed R packages to get data from these architectures. You'll learn how to connect to a database and how to retrieve data from it.

Exercise 1: Connect to a databaseExercise 2: Establish a connection
Exercise 3: Inspect the connectionExercise 4: Import table dataExercise 5: List the database tablesExercise 6: Import usersExercise 7: Import all tablesExercise 8: How do the tables relate?

What is DataCamp?

Learn the data skills you need online at your own pace—from non-coding essentials to data science and machine learning.

Start Learning for Free