Getting started with R

In order for us to begin scraping websites with R, we must first get our environment set up with R, as well as RStudio. R and RStudio are available to download on many different platforms whether it be Windows, Mac, or Linux. As with everything else in this book, the environment will be set up in a Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit environment.

Downloading and installing R

R is quite easy to download and install. Any online search for CRAN (Comprehensive R Archive Network) will lead you to the latest version of R to download from the location that is closest to you. The search for R led me to the following website:  https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/.

At the time of writing this book, the latest version of R is version 3.3.2 for Windows 32/64-bit, as can be seen in the following screenshot:

Once the file has been downloaded, the next step is to begin the installation of the executable file as shown in the following screenshot:

Select the default destination where...