Get admin boundaries for any country with R.

geo_bounds.R

#' @title get administritive outlines for a country
#' @description using the geoBoundaires API,
#' download the geojson outline of a country
#' @param country character vector of country names
#' @param admin_level character vector of admin levels to download
#' @return sf object of the outlines
#' @details check out the documentation for the geoboundaries API at:
#' geoBoundaries.org
#'
geo_bounds <- function(country, admin_level = c("ADM0", "ADM1", "ADM2")) {
    country <- countrycode::countrycode(country,
        origin = "country.name",
        destination = "iso3c"
    )
    url <- paste(
        "https://www.geoboundaries.org/api/current/gbOpen/",
        country, admin_level[1],
        sep = "/"
    )
    get <- httr::GET(url)
    cont <- httr::content(get, as = "parsed")
    area <- sf::read_sf(cont$gjDownloadURL)
    return(area)
}

usage:

x <- geo_bounds("United Kingdom")
plot(x["geometry"])