Assignment 7 - Working with XML and JSON in R

Subject
Libraries
HTML
XML
JSON
Conclusion

Subject

“Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom.” - The Minimalists https://www.theminimalists.com/minimalism/

Libraries

library(RCurl)

## Loading required package: bitops

library(stringr)
library(plyr)
library(XML)
library(jsonlite)
library(rvest)

## Loading required package: xml2

## 
## Attaching package: 'rvest'

## The following object is masked from 'package:XML':
## 
##     xml

HTML

Overview

HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and describes the structure of Web pages using markup. HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages and are represented by tags. HTML tags label pieces of content such as “heading”, “paragraph”, “table”, and so on. Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to render the content of the page

Creating the files

I used visual studio code as my text editor to create the HTML and used the following site as a reference:https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp.

HTML

Read and load file

I installed the rvest package to read my HTMLfile and used the readHTMLTable fucntion.

HTMLfile<-"C:/Users/iramesa/Desktop/books.html"
HTMLData<- paste(readLines(HTMLfile), collapse="\n")
booksHTML<-readHTMLTable(HTMLData, which = 1, header = TRUE, stringAsFactors = FALSE)
booksHTML

##                                                                                    Title
## 1 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of decluttering and Organizing
## 2                                                     Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life
## 3        Spark joy: An Illustrated Master Class of the Art  of Organizing and Tidying Up
##                                Author(s)          Publisher    Format
## 1                            Marie Kondo    Ten Speed Press Hardcover
## 2 Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus Asymmetrical Press Paperback
## 3                            Marie Kondo    Ten Speed Press Hardcover
##    Price
## 1  $9.69
## 2 $15.29
## 3 $13.29

XML

Overview

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. XML was designed to store and transport data. XML was designed to be both human- and machine-readable.

Creating the files

I used visual studio code as my text editor to create the HTML and used the following site as a reference:https://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_elements.asp.

XML

Read and Load file

I installed the XML package to read my XMLfile and used the xmlTreeParse fucntion.

library(XML)
XMLfile<-"C:/Users/iramesa/Desktop/books.xml"
xmldoc<-xmlParse(XMLfile)
rootNode<-xmlRoot(xmldoc)
data <- xmlSApply(rootNode,function(x) xmlSApply(x, xmlValue))
booksXML <- data.frame(t(data),row.names=NULL)
booksXML[,]

##                                                                                    Title
## 1 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of decluttering and Organizing
## 2                                                     Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life
## 3        Spark joy: An Illustrated Master Class of the Art  of Organizing and Tidying Up
##                                   Author          Publisher    Format
## 1                           Marie Kondo     Ten Speed Press Hardcover
## 2 Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus Asymmetrical Press Paperback
## 3                           Marie Kondo     Ten Speed Press Hardcover
##    Price
## 1  $9.69
## 2 $15.29
## 3 $13.29

JSON

Overview

JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation.JSON is a syntax for storing and exchanging data.JSON is text, written with JavaScript object notation.JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format and is “self-describing” and easy to understand. It is language independent. JSON uses JavaScript syntax, but the JSON format is text only.Text can be read and used as a data format by any programming language.

Creating the files

I used visual studio code as my text editor to create the JSON file and used the following site as a reference: https://www.w3schools.com/jS/js_json_arrays.asp and http://opensource.adobe.com/Spry/samples/data_region/JSONDataSetSample.

JSON

Read and Load file

I installed the rjosn package to get my JSON file and used the fromJSON() fucntion.

library(jsonlite)
JSONfile<-"C:/Users/iramesa/Desktop/books.json"
JsonData<-fromJSON(JSONfile)
booksJSON<-as.data.frame(JsonData)
rownames(booksJSON)<-NULL
names(booksJSON)<-c("Title","Author","Publisher","Format","Price")
booksJSON

##                                                                                    Title
## 1 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of decluttering and Organizing
## 2                                                     Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life
## 3        Spark joy: An Illustrated Master Class of the Art  of Organizing and Tidying Up
##                                   Author          Publisher    Format
## 1                            Marie Kondo    Ten Speed Press Hardcover
## 2 Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus Asymmetrical Press Paperback
## 3                            Marie Kondo    Ten Speed Press Hardcover
##    Price
## 1  $9.69
## 2 $15.29
## 3 $13.29

Resource: https://www.datacamp.com/community/tutorials/r-data-import-tutorial#javascript

Conclusion

All tables are the same except I had to tidy the JSON table because I used the as.data.frame function for the JSON table. I did not use dataframe functions for HTML and XML data.