Render multiple R Markdown documents into a book

Render multiple R Markdown files under the current working directory into a book. It can be used in the RStudio IDE (specifically, the knit field in YAML). The preview_chapter() function is a wrapper of render_book(preview = TRUE).

render_book(
  input = ".",
  output_format = NULL,
  ...,
  clean = TRUE,
  envir = parent.frame(),
  clean_envir = !interactive(),
  output_dir = NULL,
  new_session = NA,
  preview = FALSE,
  config_file = "_bookdown.yml"
)

preview_chapter(..., envir = parent.frame())

Arguments

input: A directory, an input filename or multiple filenames. For a directory, index.Rmd will be used if it exists in this (book) project directory. For filenames, if preview = TRUE, only files specified in this argument are rendered, otherwise all R Markdown files specified by the book are rendered.
output_format, ..., clean, envir: Arguments to be passed to rmarkdown::render(). For preview_chapter(), ... is passed to render_book(). See rmarkdown::render() and the bookdown reference book for details on how output formatting options are set from YAML or parameters supplied by the user when calling render_book().
clean_envir: This argument has been deprecated and will be removed in future versions of bookdown.
output_dir: The output directory. If NULL, a field named output_dir in the configuration file _bookdown.yml will be used (possibly not specified, either, in which case a directory name _book will be used).
new_session: Whether to use new R sessions to compile individual Rmd files (if not provided, the value of the new_session option in _bookdown.yml is used; if this is also not provided, new_session = FALSE).
preview: Whether to render and preview the input files specified by the input argument. Previewing a certain chapter may save compilation time as you actively work on this chapter, but the output may not be accurate (e.g. cross-references to other chapters will not work).
config_file: The book configuration file.

Details

There are two ways to render a book from Rmd files. The default way (new_session = FALSE) is to merge Rmd files into a single file and render this file. You can also choose to render each individual Rmd file in a new R session (new_session = TRUE).

Examples

# see https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown for the full documentation
if (file.exists("index.Rmd")) bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")
if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# will use the default format defined in index.Rmd or _output.yml
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")
# will use the options for format defined in YAML metadata
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", "bookdown::pdf_book")
# If you pass an output format object, it must have all the options set
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", bookdown::pdf_book(toc = FALSE))

# will render the book in the current directory
bookdown::render_book()
# this is equivalent to
bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd")
# will render the book living in the specified directory
bookdown::render_book("my_book_project")
} # }