Overview

• Identify multiple methods for obtaining data from the internet
• Define application program interface (API)
• Explain authentication keys and demonstrate secure methods for storing these keys
• Demonstrate how to use canned packages in R to access APIs
• Practice gathering data from Twitter API using the rtweet package in R
• Identify methods for writing functions to interact with APIs
• Define JSON and XML data structure and how to convert them to data frames
• Practice tidying messy JSON data objects using purrr::map()

Before class

• Read Getting data from the web: API access
• Read Getting data from the web: writing API queries

Slides and links

• Slides
• Practice getting data from the Twitter API

• Simplifying lists with purrr

• More install-and-play API packages for R
• Documentation for httr

• Lot’s more tutorials and practice with purrr and recursive lists

What you need to do