targets_example

Minimal working example of the targets package in R, centered around an interactive presentation:

• Live presentation: https://exp98.github.io/targets_example/
• The presentation is built exclusively with R using Quarto (no other languages/tools).

Why targets?

targets helps you build reproducible, efficient data pipelines:

• Declare a DAG of steps (targets); it runs only what changed.
• Caches intermediate results to avoid redundant work.
• Scales from local runs to parallel/backends without changing code.
• Makes pipelines inspectable (graphs, metadata, progress).

What’s in this example

• A small pipeline that produces artifacts used in the presentation.
• A saved pipeline graph for quick inspection (targets_graph.html).
• Simple folder layout to keep code, outputs, and slides separate.

Quick start

1. Open the project in R/RStudio.
2. Install packages:

install.packages("targets")         # pipeline
# optional helpers:
# install.packages("tarchetypes")

3. Run the pipeline:

targets::tar_make()

4. Explore the pipeline graph:

targets::tar_visnetwork()

Or open the pre-rendered file: targets_graph.html

Build slides locally (optional; requires Quarto):

• Render with Quarto (from R): quarto::quarto_render("03.Presentation")
• Or via CLI: quarto render 03.Presentation

Project layout

• _targets.R — pipeline definition
• _targets.yaml and _targets/ — targets metadata/cache
• 01.Targets/ — scripts supporting targets
• 02.Outputs/ — generated artifacts
• 03.Presentation/ — Quarto slides (rendered for the live site)
• docs/ — site output for GitHub Pages
• targets_graph.html — saved pipeline graph