Getting data from the web: API access

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 data structure and how to convert them to data frames
• Practice tidying messy JSON data objects using tidyr

Before class

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

Class materials

• Practice getting data from the Twitter API
• Simplifying lists

Additional resources

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

What you need to do after class