Getting data from the web: API access

Overview

• Identify multiple methods for obtaining data from the internet
• Define web-scraping
• Define Application Program Interface (API)
• Explain APIs authentication keys and demonstrate secure methods for storing these keys
• Interact with APIs
• Define JSON data structure and how to convert them to data frames

Before class

• Chapter 1 and 4 in Web Scraping with R
• Setup:
  1. Go to the geonames site and register an account
  2. Click here to enable the free web service
  3. Go to the OMDb website and click on the “API Key” tab to generate your API key

Several packages are needed for this week’s lectures (all installed on R workbench). If you are using R from your laptop (VS. R Workbench), I’d suggest following the lectures using R Workbench and installing the packages after class.

Additional Resources

• rvest documentation
• httr documentation
• Web Scraping using R Cheat Sheet
• More install-and-play API packages for R

Class materials

• Run the code below in your console to download today’s in-class exercises: usethis::use_course("CFSS-MACSS/web-api-access")