Part 1 - Easy ways to collect different types of data from the web with R

Easy ways to collect different types of data from the web with R.

Part 1 - Easy ways to collect different types of data from the web with R

November 9, 2016

The internet is a treasure trove of data, if you know how to collect it. In this two-part series of webinars, we will examine easy ways to collect different types of data from the web with R.

In Part 1 we will use the httr package to collect data that is provided through web APIs. APIs are a popular and efficient way to share data online. If someone purposefully collected your data to share online, there is a good chance that they are sharing it through an API. Unfortunately, not all APIs work the same way, and how they are implemented depends largely on the developer. In this webinar, we will look at the basic components of HTTP, the language that underlies web APIs. You will learn how to make HTTP requests to an API with the httr package, and how to use best practices when making HTTP GET requests from APIs with R.

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About the speaker

Garrett is the author of Hands-On Programming with R and co-author of R for Data Science and R Markdown: The Definitive Guide. He is a Data Scientist at RStudio and holds a Ph.D. in Statistics, but specializes in teaching. He’s taught people how to use R at over 50 government agencies, small businesses, and multi-billion dollar global companies; and he’s designed RStudio’s training materials for R, Shiny, R Markdown and more. Garrett wrote the popular lubridate package for dates and times in R and creates the RStudio cheatsheets.