This section lists some examples of public HTTP APIs that publish data in JSON format. These are great to get a sense of the complex structures that are encountered in real world JSON data. All services are free, but some require registration/authentication. Each example returns lots of data, therefore not all output is printed in this document.
library(jsonlite)Github is an online code repository and has APIs to get live data on almost all activity. Below some examples from a well known R package and author:
hadley_orgs <- fromJSON("https://api.github.com/users/hadley/orgs")
hadley_repos <- fromJSON("https://api.github.com/users/hadley/repos")
gg_commits <- fromJSON("https://api.github.com/repos/hadley/ggplot2/commits")
gg_issues <- fromJSON("https://api.github.com/repos/hadley/ggplot2/issues")
#latest issues
paste(format(gg_issues$user$login), ":", gg_issues$title) [1] "aphalo : Changed stacking order"
[2] "Ax3man : geom_hex no longer recognizes ..count.."
[3] "ironv : geom_dotplot dot layout with groups"
[4] "hadley : Eliminate ... in themes()"
[5] "hadley : Document all elements in a single file"
[6] "enfascination : text justification for multiline titles with uneven line lengths"
[7] "eipi10 : stat_summary_bin bug?"
[8] "petersmp : Add box around text elements"
[9] "DarwinAwardWinner : Scale gradient doc fix"
[10] "DarwinAwardWinner : Docs for \"scale_color_gradient\" say 'discrete_scale' instead of 'continuous_scale'"
[11] "DarwinAwardWinner : Pass dots to continuous_scale in scale_size/radius"
[12] "thomasp85 : Fix positional scale constructors"
[13] "thomasp85 : Extending theme arguments"
[14] "hadley : Margin tweaks for legends"
[15] "matthewpersico : No Clear License"
[16] "DanRuderman : Allow faceting by expressions in addition to column names"
[17] "AmeliaMN : expanding overall package documentation"
[18] "hadley : Setting date labels loses tz"
[19] "mnbram : geom_violin quantile lines respond to alpha"
[20] "DanRuderman : Violin outliers"
[21] "thomasp85 : Better handling of numeric levels in scale_discrete"
[22] "nbafrank : violin plots are rendered with long tails in current stable GGPLOT2"
[23] "tdhock : non-standard params / geom-specific metadata"
[24] "huftis : Add asymmetrical `expand` argument to continuous and discrete scales"
[25] "thomasp85 : Use vdiffr for visual regression test"
[26] "hbuschme : Expose argument n from stats::density in the interface of stat_density."
[27] "collioud : geom_histogram: wrong bins?"
[28] "jonathan-g : Specify alpha for outlier points in geom_boxplot."
[29] "wch : Discrete x/y scales reserve space for unused limits"
[30] "thomasp85 : facets to ggproto" A single public API that shows location, status and current availability for all stations in the New York City bike sharing imitative.
citibike <- fromJSON("http://citibikenyc.com/stations/json")
stations <- citibike$stationBeanList
colnames(stations) [1] "id" "stationName"
[3] "availableDocks" "totalDocks"
[5] "latitude" "longitude"
[7] "statusValue" "statusKey"
[9] "availableBikes" "stAddress1"
[11] "stAddress2" "city"
[13] "postalCode" "location"
[15] "altitude" "testStation"
[17] "lastCommunicationTime" "landMark" nrow(stations)[1] 664The Ergast Developer API is an experimental web service which provides a historical record of motor racing data for non-commercial purposes.
res <- fromJSON('http://ergast.com/api/f1/2004/1/results.json')
drivers <- res$MRData$RaceTable$Races$Results[[1]]$Driver
colnames(drivers)[1] "driverId" "code" "url" "givenName"
[5] "familyName" "dateOfBirth" "nationality" "permanentNumber"drivers[1:10, c("givenName", "familyName", "code", "nationality")] givenName familyName code nationality
1 Michael Schumacher MSC German
2 Rubens Barrichello BAR Brazilian
3 Fernando Alonso ALO Spanish
4 Ralf Schumacher SCH German
5 Juan Pablo Montoya MON Colombian
6 Jenson Button BUT British
7 Jarno Trulli TRU Italian
8 David Coulthard COU British
9 Takuma Sato SAT Japanese
10 Giancarlo Fisichella FIS ItalianBelow an example from the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer API where we retrieve the first 10 pages of tax-exempt organizations in the USA, ordered by revenue. The rbind.pages function is used to combine the pages into a single data frame.
#store all pages in a list first
baseurl <- "https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api/v1/search.json?order=revenue&sort_order=desc"
pages <- list()
for(i in 0:10){
mydata <- fromJSON(paste0(baseurl, "&page=", i), flatten=TRUE)
message("Retrieving page ", i)
pages[[i+1]] <- mydata$filings
}
#combine all into one
filings <- rbind.pages(pages)
#check output
nrow(filings)[1] 275filings[1:10, c("organization.sub_name", "organization.city", "totrevenue")] organization.sub_name organization.city
1 KAISER FOUNDATION HEALTH PLAN INC OAKLAND
2 KAISER FOUNDATION HEALTH PLAN INC OAKLAND
3 KAISER FOUNDATION HEALTH PLAN INC OAKLAND
4 DAVIDSON COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC LEXINGTON
5 KAISER FOUNDATION HOSPITALS OAKLAND
6 KAISER FOUNDATION HOSPITALS OAKLAND
7 KAISER FOUNDATION HOSPITALS OAKLAND
8 PARTNERS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INC CHARLESTOWN
9 PARTNERS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INC CHARLESTOWN
10 PARTNERS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INC CHARLESTOWN
totrevenue
1 42346486950
2 40148558254
3 37786011714
4 30821445312
5 20013171194
6 18543043972
7 17980030355
8 10619215354
9 10452560305
10 9636630380The New York Times has several APIs as part of the NYT developer network. These interface to data from various departments, such as news articles, book reviews, real estate, etc. Registration is required (but free) and a key can be obtained at here. The code below includes some example keys for illustration purposes.
#search for articles
article_key <- "&api-key=b75da00e12d54774a2d362adddcc9bef"
url <- "http://api.nytimes.com/svc/search/v2/articlesearch.json?q=obamacare+socialism"
req <- fromJSON(paste0(url, article_key))
articles <- req$response$docs
colnames(articles) [1] "web_url" "snippet" "lead_paragraph"
[4] "abstract" "print_page" "blog"
[7] "source" "multimedia" "headline"
[10] "keywords" "pub_date" "document_type"
[13] "news_desk" "section_name" "subsection_name"
[16] "byline" "type_of_material" "_id"
[19] "word_count" "slideshow_credits"#search for best sellers
books_key <- "&api-key=76363c9e70bc401bac1e6ad88b13bd1d"
url <- "http://api.nytimes.com/svc/books/v2/lists/overview.json?published_date=2013-01-01"
req <- fromJSON(paste0(url, books_key))
bestsellers <- req$results$list
category1 <- bestsellers[[1, "books"]]
subset(category1, select = c("author", "title", "publisher")) author title publisher
1 Gillian Flynn GONE GIRL Crown Publishing
2 John Grisham THE RACKETEER Knopf Doubleday Publishing
3 E L James FIFTY SHADES OF GREY Knopf Doubleday Publishing
4 Nicholas Sparks SAFE HAVEN Grand Central Publishing
5 David Baldacci THE FORGOTTEN Grand Central Publishing#movie reviews
movie_key <- "&api-key=b75da00e12d54774a2d362adddcc9bef"
url <- "http://api.nytimes.com/svc/movies/v2/reviews/dvd-picks.json?order=by-date"
req <- fromJSON(paste0(url, movie_key))
reviews <- req$results
colnames(reviews) [1] "display_title" "mpaa_rating" "critics_pick"
[4] "byline" "headline" "summary_short"
[7] "publication_date" "opening_date" "date_updated"
[10] "link" "multimedia" reviews[1:5, c("display_title", "byline", "mpaa_rating")] display_title byline mpaa_rating
1 Command and Control NEIL GENZLINGER
2 When the Bough Breaks NEIL GENZLINGER PG-13
3 Kicks STEPHEN HOLDEN R
4 Demon MANOHLA DARGIS R
5 As I Open My Eyes STEPHEN HOLDEN CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.
key <- "f6dv6cas5vw7arn5b9d7mdm3"
res <- fromJSON(paste0("http://api.crunchbase.com/v/1/search.js?query=R&api_key=", key))
head(res$results)The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit that helps to make government transparent and accountable through data, tools, policy and journalism. Register a free key at here. An example key is provided.
key <- "&apikey=39c83d5a4acc42be993ee637e2e4ba3d"
#Find bills about drones
drone_bills <- fromJSON(paste0("http://openstates.org/api/v1/bills/?q=drone", key))
drone_bills$title <- substring(drone_bills$title, 1, 40)
print(drone_bills[1:5, c("title", "state", "chamber", "type")]) title state chamber
1 Appropriations; zero budget; omnibus bud mi upper
2 Crimes: emergency personnel. ca lower
3 DRONE TASK FORCE APPT il lower
4 Relates to prohibiting civilian drone us ny upper
5 Relates to prohibiting civilian drone us ny lower
type
1 bill
2 bill, fiscal committee, local program
3 bill
4 bill
5 bill#Congress mentioning "constitution"
res <- fromJSON(paste0("http://capitolwords.org/api/1/dates.json?phrase=immigration", key))
wordcount <- res$results
wordcount$day <- as.Date(wordcount$day)
summary(wordcount) count day raw_count
Min. : 1.00 Min. :1996-01-02 Min. : 1.00
1st Qu.: 3.00 1st Qu.:2001-04-02 1st Qu.: 3.00
Median : 8.00 Median :2006-04-05 Median : 8.00
Mean : 24.82 Mean :2006-02-21 Mean : 24.82
3rd Qu.: 21.00 3rd Qu.:2011-01-05 3rd Qu.: 21.00
Max. :1835.00 Max. :2016-07-01 Max. :1835.00 #Local legislators
legislators <- fromJSON(paste0("http://congress.api.sunlightfoundation.com/",
"legislators/locate?latitude=42.96&longitude=-108.09", key))
subset(legislators$results, select=c("last_name", "chamber", "term_start", "twitter_id")) last_name chamber term_start twitter_id
1 Lummis house 2015-01-06 CynthiaLummis
2 Enzi senate 2015-01-06 SenatorEnzi
3 Barrasso senate 2013-01-03 SenJohnBarrassoThe twitter API requires OAuth2 authentication. Some example code:
#Create your own appication key at https://dev.twitter.com/apps
consumer_key = "EZRy5JzOH2QQmVAe9B4j2w";
consumer_secret = "OIDC4MdfZJ82nbwpZfoUO4WOLTYjoRhpHRAWj6JMec";
#Use basic auth
secret <- jsonlite::base64_enc(paste(consumer_key, consumer_secret, sep = ":"))
req <- httr::POST("https://api.twitter.com/oauth2/token",
httr::add_headers(
"Authorization" = paste("Basic", gsub("\n", "", secret)),
"Content-Type" = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8"
),
body = "grant_type=client_credentials"
);
#Extract the access token
httr::stop_for_status(req, "authenticate with twitter")
token <- paste("Bearer", httr::content(req)$access_token)
#Actual API call
url <- "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?count=10&screen_name=Rbloggers"
req <- httr::GET(url, httr::add_headers(Authorization = token))
json <- httr::content(req, as = "text")
tweets <- fromJSON(json)
substring(tweets$text, 1, 100) [1] "Announcing the simputation package: make imputation simple https://t.co/eFteUiLAhQ #rstats #DataScie"
[2] "Forecasting Opportunities https://t.co/Pq3F0JSO6J #rstats #DataScience"
[3] "2016-12 ‘DOM’ Version 0.2 https://t.co/RC9XpL1uzF #rstats #DataScience"
[4] "New Version of the OpenStreetMap R Pacakge https://t.co/r9Jqlk17rI #rstats #DataScience"
[5] "Independent t test in R https://t.co/LhnwLkKheq #rstats #DataScience"
[6] "anytime 0.0.1: New package for ‘anything’ to POSIXct (or Date) https://t.co/4AAqpzGsQP #rstats #Data"
[7] "New features in imager 0.30 https://t.co/CsSnrS3qPU #rstats #DataScience"
[8] "Creating an animation using R https://t.co/iCYmjk7jgg #rstats #DataScience"
[9] "New R job: Research and Analytics Associate https://t.co/6rg3nJBTv6 #rstats #DataScience #jobs"
[10] "Analysing the Modelled Territorial Authority GDP estimates for New Zealand https://t.co/Pw5x6RS37R #"