Data manipulation in Power BI

Question

I am new to Power BI and have recently been exploring its potential use as a data visualization tool. I currently add my data through Get Data -> "R Script" where I use read.csv and the dplyr package to import and sort through the messy data. I currently haven't found a way to edit the import scripts so any new changes I make to the script result in me having to re-import the data and reconnecting all the app links.

My potential new approach is to import the data into Power BI with read.csv and modifying the contents via Transform Data -> Transform -> R Script. My issue is that when I run the following script Power BI's output is an empty table:

i.e:# 'dataset' holds the input data for this script

library(dplyr)

dataset <- dataset %>%
select(2,3,4) %>%
rename(First= A) %>%
rename(Last= B) %>%
rename(Extra= C)

Said script runs on RStudio, any suggestions?

Answer 1

Your second approach sounds about right which is to load data first in Power BI and then transform it in R.

Load the output of your R script to a new variable which should fix the problem. Updated script is below:

library(dplyr)

output <- dataset %>%
select(2,3,4) %>%
rename(First= A) %>%
rename(Last= B) %>%
rename(Extra= C)