How to load a function written in a .r file into environment while rendering a Quarto Project?

[ming-cui]

Description

For the individual .qmd files, the code blocks use a large function written in a .r file. I will first open the .r file and run all the code in it to make .qmd files work. Specifically, for the code below, I need to first open the .r file, execute all the code in it, and then get a function called A_function_written_in_dotR_file. So, rendering the project containing the code below will fail because I couldn't find a way to automatically load the function A_function_written_in_dotR_file into the environment.

---
title: "Reproducible Quarto Document"
format: html
---

```{r}
A_function_written_in_dotR_file(cars)
```

The end.

I got this error message when trying to render the project:

21% (unnamed-chunk-3) Quitting from lines 107-123 (sample.qmd) 
Error in file(file, "rt") : cannot open the connection
Calls: .main ... eval_with_user_handlers -> eval -> eval -> read.table -> file

[mcanouil]

Could you edit your post with both a question in the title and in the body?

Also, could you share a small self-contained "working" (reproducible) example to work with, i.e., a complete Quarto document or a Git repository? Thanks.

You can share a Quarto document using the following syntax, i.e., using more backticks than you have in your document (usually four ````).

````qmd
---
title: "Reproducible Quarto Document"
format: html
---

This is a reproducible Quarto document using `format: html`.
It is written in Markdown and contains embedded R code.
When you run the code, it will produce a plot.

```{r}
plot(cars)
```

The end.
````

[mcanouil]

Why don't you use source()?

[cderv]

Additional resource on this:

This is the recipe for knitr on how to source an external script in a Project. https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown-cookbook/source-script.html

This works with Quarto too.