How to load additional packages with R::rticles?

Question

I mostly code in R, and have been using knitr Rnw for a while, mostly following the best practices outline in 14mech14's YouTube videos, with a parent rnw document, child rnw document, and a document for my R code and all the tables / figures.

I recently started experimenting with Rmd for my journal articles using the rticles package, but just ran into the issue of having to load new packages into the Rmd document. I have seen Yihui's document, but it doesn't seem to work if I have

output: rticles::aea_article
extra_dependencies: ["rotating"]

How do I solve this issue? (Moreover, if I have colleagues that work in STATA, how do I enable them to work on the paper as well? Should I just write everything in Latex itself and export?)

Here is my .Rmd file:

---
title: "BLAH"
month: "`r format(Sys.Date(), '%m')`"
year: "`r format(Sys.Date(), '%Y')`"
author:
  - name: Myself
    firstname: Nobody
    surname: Owens
    email: nobody.owens@blob.edu
    affiliation: some institute of technology
acknowledgements: |
  Thank you to my humble research assistant for his research assistance.
abstract: |
  This is the abstract.

output: rticles::aea_article
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
# this R code imports my data from the .R file: (of course for this online example I don't have a file to show)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE, warning = FALSE)

# IMPORT PACKAGES-------------
list.of.packages <- c("dplyr", "data.table","ggplot2", "kableExtra", "tinytex", "stargazer")
new.packages <- list.of.packages[!(list.of.packages %in% installed.packages()[, "Package"])]
if (length(new.packages)) install.packages(new.packages)
for (package in list.of.packages) {library(eval((package)), character.only = TRUE)}

# LOAD THE DATA FROM THE .R FILE---------
# load(".RData")
```
Blah blah blah...

This works, because it's a small table.

```{r, echo = FALSE, warning = FALSE}
# some table with kableExtra package:
# just an example...
a <- data.frame(a = c("orcs","orcs","elves", "elves", "elves"), b = c(1,2,3,4,5), c = c(1,2,3,4,5))

a %>% kbl(
  .,
  booktabs = TRUE,
  linesep = "",
  caption = "Model Summary Statistics",
  label = "meansd"
) %>%
  kableExtra::column_spec(column = 2:3, width = "0.5in") %>%
  kableExtra::collapse_rows(columns = 1,
                            valign = "middle",
                            longtable_clean_cut = FALSE) %>%
  kable_styling(
    font_size = 4,
    latex_options =
      c("hold_position",
        "condensed")
  )
```

But what if I have a big one...?


\begin{table}[!htbp]\centering
\caption{My Regressions}
\label{tab:nobodyowensregressions}
```{r, results = "asis"}

# this is some code from my original .R file that gets saved into the .RData file:

panelfit <- list()
for (i_ in c(1:10)){
panelfit[[i_]] <- lm(b~c, data = a)
}

model.smmrys.tex <- 
  R.utils::captureOutput(
    stargazer(
      panelfit,
      type="latex",
      font.size = "footnotesize",
      style = "aer",
      float = FALSE,
      column.sep.width = "-12pt",
      df = FALSE,
      dep.var.labels = "",
      dep.var.caption = ""
    )
  )

cat(model.smmrys.tex, sep = "\n")

```
\end{table}

Ideally, I'd like to be able to do something like \begin{sidewaysfigure}, \end{sidewaysfigure} before and after the table. Landscape doesn't work here because AEA is twosided. Do I just have to edit the base .Tex file? (I'm fine with that, but was hoping for an Rmd solution).

Note: You have to have the AEA cls file from the rticles package in the same directory as this Rmd document in order for this to run.

Note2: I have posted on the rticles Github page

I just found out this question has already been asked here

Answer 1

This is what I ended up doing. I found out my question was asked here.

---
title: "BLAH"
month: "`r format(Sys.Date(), '%m')`"
year: "`r format(Sys.Date(), '%Y')`"
author:
  - name: Myself
    firstname: Nobody
    surname: Owens
    email: nobody.owens@blob.edu
    affiliation: some institute of technology
acknowledgements: |
  Thank you to my humble research assistant for his research assistance.
abstract: |
  This is the abstract.

output: rticles::aea_article

header-includes: 
 - \usepackage{graphicx} # THIS REALLY IS THE KEY HERE
 - \usepackage{rotating}
 - \usepackage{pdflscape}
 - \usepackage{dpfloat}
 - \usepackage{biblatex}
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
# this R code imports my data from the .R file: (of course for this online example I don't have a file to show)

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE, warning = FALSE)

# IMPORT PACKAGES-------------
list.of.packages <- c("dplyr", "data.table","ggplot2", "kableExtra", "tinytex", "stargazer", "R.utils")
new.packages <- list.of.packages[!(list.of.packages %in% installed.packages()[, "Package"])]
if (length(new.packages)) install.packages(new.packages)
for (package in list.of.packages) {library(eval((package)), character.only = TRUE)}

# LOAD THE DATA FROM THE .R FILE---------
# load(".RData")
```
Blah blah blah...

This works, because it's a small table.

```{r, echo = FALSE, warning = FALSE}
# some table with kableExtra package:
# just an example...
a <- data.frame(a = c("orcs","orcs","elves", "elves", "elves"), b = c(1,2,3,4,5), c = c(1,2,3,4,5))

a %>% kbl(
  .,
  booktabs = TRUE,
  linesep = "",
  caption = "Model Summary Statistics",
  label = "meansd"
) %>%
  kableExtra::column_spec(column = 2:3, width = "0.5in") %>%
  kableExtra::collapse_rows(columns = 1,
                            valign = "middle",
                            longtable_clean_cut = FALSE) %>%
  kable_styling(
    font_size = 4,
    latex_options =
      c("hold_position",
        "condensed")
  )
```

But what if I have a big one...?


\begin{sidewaystable} # AND THEN YOU CAN EDIT THE RMD FILE LIKE SO
\caption{My Regressions}
\label{tab:nobodyowensregressions}
```{r, results = "asis"}

# this is some code from my original .R file that gets saved into the .RData file:

panelfit <- list()
for (i_ in c(1:10)){
panelfit[[i_]] <- lm(b~c, data = a)
}

model.smmrys.tex <- 
  R.utils::captureOutput(
    stargazer(
      panelfit,
      type="latex",
      font.size = "footnotesize",
      style = "aer",
      float = FALSE,
      column.sep.width = "-12pt",
      df = FALSE,
      dep.var.labels = "",
      dep.var.caption = ""
    )
  )

cat(model.smmrys.tex, sep = "\n")

```
\end{sidewaystable}