Building custom ArcGIS tools with R

Scripts written in R can be called from ArcGIS via custom script tools in much the same way that Python can be used. There are three components of R scripts tools, including the R script, a custom toolbox, and parameters for the script. The arcgisbinding package provides the mechanism for communication between R and ArcGIS.

Introduction to the arcgisbinding package

The arcgisbinding package allows you to access ArcGIS format data from an R script. Using this package, you can access geodatabases and shapefiles for read and write purposes. You can also select subsets of GIS datasets using a select() function that acts much the same as cursor objects in Python. Basically, they are in-memory copies of datasets. You can also convert...