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Required Packages

To work with the GSS StatsBank API in R, you’ll need two key packages:
1

Install httr2

The httr2 package handles HTTP requests and responses, allowing you to communicate with the API.
install.packages("httr2")
2

Install tidyverse

The tidyverse package provides tools for data manipulation and transformation, which you’ll use to clean and reshape the API responses.
install.packages("tidyverse")
3

Load the packages

Once installed, load both packages at the beginning of your script:
library(httr2)
library(tidyverse)

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Package Overview

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httr2

httr2 is a modern HTTP client for R that provides a clean, pipe-friendly interface for making API requests. Key functions you’ll use:
  • request() - Initialize an API request
  • req_url_path_append() - Build URL paths incrementally
  • req_body_json() - Attach JSON query data to requests
  • req_perform() - Execute the HTTP request
  • resp_body_json() - Parse JSON responses
  • resp_body_raw() - Get raw response data (for CSV responses)
The httr2 package uses a pipe-friendly design, making it easy to chain operations together with |> or %>%.

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tidyverse

The tidyverse is a collection of R packages for data science. For this guide, you’ll primarily use:
  • purrr - For functional programming (mapping, reducing)
  • readr - For reading CSV data
  • tidyr - For reshaping data (pivoting wide to long format)
  • dplyr - For data manipulation (renaming, filtering)

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Verify Installation

You can verify that the packages are installed correctly by running: 
packageVersion("httr2")
packageVersion("tidyverse")
If both commands return version numbers without errors, you’re ready to proceed.
Make sure you have R version 4.0 or higher installed. You can check your R version with R.version.string.

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Next Steps

With your environment set up, you’re ready to start retrieving data. Continue to the Quick Start guide to make your first API request.

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