Overview | ArcGIS R-Bridge

The {arcgisutils} package provides utility functions for working with ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise portals. Portal functionality enables you to interact with users, groups, and content items programmatically from R.

Portal-related function documentation is available in the API Reference

Authentication

Most portal-related functionality is dependent upon user-privileges. As such, many functions require authenticating to your portal. Further, some functionality may be restricted based on your user’s role. Before working with portal functions, you need to obtain an access token.

If you have not yet set up your R environment for authentication, see the Authentication section. Ensure that the environment variables. If you are using ArcGIS Enterprise, ensure that ARCGIS_HOST is properly set.

To authenticate as yourself and set the token for your session:

library(arcgisutils)

# Set the token for the entire session
set_arc_token(auth_user())

Using set_arc_token() makes the authentication token available for all subsequent portal operations in your R session, so you don’t need to pass the token to each function call.

Portal Functionality

The R-ArcGIS Bridge provides functions to:

Function	Description
`arc_user()`	Get information about a specific user by username or ID
`arc_user_self()`	Get information about the currently authenticated user
`arc_portal_users()`	List all users in a portal
`arc_group()`	Get information about a specific group by ID
`arc_user_content()`	List content items owned by a user
`arc_group_content()`	List content items shared with a group
`search_items()`	Search for content items using full-text search

Working with Portal Objects

Portal functions return specially formatted objects that contain metadata about users, groups, and content items:

PortalUser: Contains user profile information, groups, and settings
PortalGroup: Contains group metadata, membership info, and sharing settings
PortalItem: Contains item metadata like title, type, owner, and URL

These objects are lists with custom print methods that display key information in a user-friendly format. You can access individual fields using standard list notation (e.g., user$username, group$title).

Next Steps

Learn more about specific portal functionality:

Content Listings: Search and discover content items
Users and Groups: Work with portal users and groups