Working with XML and JSON in R

Author

Rashad Long

Load required packages

library(rvest) # for working with HTML
library(xml2) # for working with XML
library(jsonlite) # for working with JSON
library(httr) # for working with HTTP
library(tidyverse)
library(XML)

Read HTML Table

# Read HTML table using rvest
df_html <- rvest::read_html("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RDLong718/DATA607-Spring24/main/DATA607-Spring2024/Assignments/Working%20with%20XML%20and%20JSON%20on%20R/Working%20with%20XML%20and%20JSON%20in%20R.html") %>% 
  rvest::html_nodes("table") %>% 
  rvest::html_table(fill = TRUE)
print(df_html)

[[1]]
# A tibble: 3 × 3
  Title                                    Authors                    Attributes
  <chr>                                    <chr>                      <chr>     
1 No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram "Sarah Frier"              "Profiles…
2 Rich Dad Poor Dad                        "Robert T. Kiyosaki"       "Financia…
3 Getting to Yes                           "Roger Fisher\n          … "Tips on …

Read XML

df_xml <- read_xml("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RDLong718/DATA607-Spring24/main/DATA607-Spring2024/Assignments/Working%20with%20XML%20and%20JSON%20on%20R/Working%20with%20XML%20and%20JSON%20in%20R.xml")
print(df_xml)

{xml_document}
<books>
[1] <book>\n  <title>No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram</title>\n  <aut ...
[2] <book>\n  <title>Rich Dad Poor Dad</title>\n  <author>Robert T. Kiyosaki< ...
[3] <book>\n  <title>Getting to Yes</title>\n  <author>Roger Fisher</author>\ ...

Read JSON

# Read JSON file using `jsonlite` package

# Then we have to load JSON data 
json_data <- fromJSON("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RDLong718/DATA607-Spring24/main/DATA607-Spring2024/Assignments/Working%20with%20XML%20and%20JSON%20on%20R/Working%20with%20XML%20and%20JSON%20in%20R.json") 
  
# Then convert  the JSON data to dataframe 
df_json <- as.data.frame(json_data) 
  
# At last print the output dataframe 
print(df_json)

                                     title                    author
1 No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram               Sarah Frier
2                        Rich Dad Poor Dad        Robert T. Kiyosaki
3                           Getting to Yes Roger Fisher, William Ury
                                                                                                                                                                                                  attributes
1                                                                                                                                         Profiles Mark Zukerberg., Discusses the rapid growth of Instagram.
2 Financial literacy means a broad understanding of accounting and investing and knowing the markets and the law., Each chapter ends with a “Study Session,” which reviews the material and poses questions.
3                                                                             Tips on developing a cordial relationship with the other side., Avoiding the trap of being “nice” and getting walked all over.

Are they all identical?

The three dataframes are not identical. The all require some extra parsing to be done to make them identical.