I have created three different files in three different file formats (JSON, HTML and XML). I chose three different books that focus on the Troubles in Northern Ireland (a subject that played a large role in my mom’s younger years). The goal of this assignment is to create three different files in three different file formats and display each of them in a data frame. I will attempt to represent the data with the same format; however, I will also make a point to recognize when the formatting is different as that will inform how I attempt to work with different file formats in the future.
library(XML)
library(methods)
library(rjson)
library(dplyr)##
## Attaching package: 'dplyr'## The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
##
## filter, lag## The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
##
## intersect, setdiff, setequal, unionbookinfo_xml <- xmlToDataFrame('bookinfo.xml')
bookinfo_xml## Title
## 1 Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland
## 2 Milkman
## 3 Ressurection Man
## Authors Length PublishingYear Publisher
## 1 David McKittrick, David McVea 368 2002 New Amsterdam Books
## 2 Anna Burns 368 2018 Faber Faber
## 3 Eoin McNamee 240 1995 Picadorbookinfo_html <- readHTMLTable('bookinfo.html')
bookinfo_html## $`NULL`
## Title
## 1 Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland
## 2 Milkman
## 3 Resurrection Man
## Author Length PublishingYear Publisher
## 1 David McKittrick, David McVea 368 2002 New Amsterdam Books
## 2 Anna Burns 368 2018 Faber Faber
## 3 Eoin McNamee 240 1995 Picadorbookinfo_json <- fromJSON(file = "bookinfo.json") %>% as.data.frame
bookinfo_json## Title
## 1 Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland
## 2 Milkman
## 3 Resurrection Man
## Author Length PublishingYear Publisher
## 1 David McKittrick, David McVea 368 2002 New Amsterdam Books
## 2 Anna Burns 368 2018 Faber Faber
## 3 Eoin McNamee 240 1995 PicadorThe three data frames are identical in presentation despite the different storage methods. The challenge with each method seemed to be to find a creative way to store the multiple authors. I know that with JSON you can store multiple items in an array which is what I had wanted to do, however that method was not working when I wanted to display my file in a data frame. A similar issue came up with my html file (the two authors were stored as one item). Though, the way I stored the two authors for one book was different as the XML format made it easy to separately store authors as individual items. I know I could go back, now that I have the files displayed in tables, and separate those authors easily, but this was a learning process for different data structures.