Request API

After creating my dev account with the New York Times website I created an app with an api key. I made an API request using the GET function from the HTTR library. Printing the response gives us a status code of 200 which means it was successful.

r <- GET("https://api.nytimes.com/svc/books/v3/lists/current/hardcover-fiction.json?api-key=uUhvu5PYBLtlbDqzEsy9uo8DlG4O7iM3")
print(r)
## Response [https://api.nytimes.com/svc/books/v3/lists/current/hardcover-fiction.json?api-key=uUhvu5PYBLtlbDqzEsy9uo8DlG4O7iM3]
##   Date: 2021-04-12 01:51
##   Status: 200
##   Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
##   Size: 35.6 kB

Parsing the Response

We extract the text content from the response and then convert the json text into a dataframe using the function fromJSON(). Then we take the results out and convert that into a dataframe.

text_content <- content(r, "text")

json_content <- text_content %>% fromJSON

books <- data.frame(json_content$results$books)

glimpse(books)
## Rows: 15
## Columns: 26
## $ rank                 <int> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
## $ rank_last_week       <int> 0, 1, 0, 2, 9, 7, 3, 5, 14, 0, 4, 12, 0, 11, 0
## $ weeks_on_list        <int> 1, 9, 1, 18, 5, 23, 3, 5, 5, 1, 2, 44, 1, 5, 6
## $ asterisk             <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
## $ dagger               <int> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
## $ primary_isbn10       <chr> "059346527X", "1250178606", "0316499404", "05255…
## $ primary_isbn13       <chr> "9780593465271", "9781250178602", "9780316499408…
## $ publisher            <chr> "Viking", "St. Martin's", "Little, Brown", "Viki…
## $ description          <chr> "The poem read on President Joe Biden's Inaugura…
## $ price                <chr> "0.00", "0.00", "0.00", "0.00", "0.00", "0.00", …
## $ title                <chr> "THE HILL WE CLIMB", "THE FOUR WINDS", "THE RED …
## $ author               <chr> "Amanda Gorman", "Kristin Hannah", "James Patter…
## $ contributor          <chr> "by Amanda Gorman", "by Kristin Hannah", "by Jam…
## $ contributor_note     <chr> "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", …
## $ book_image           <chr> "https://storage.googleapis.com/du-prd/books/ima…
## $ book_image_width     <int> 362, 329, 323, 331, 329, 331, 331, 329, 329, 327…
## $ book_image_height    <int> 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500…
## $ amazon_product_url   <chr> "https://www.amazon.com/dp/059346527X?tag=NYTBSR…
## $ age_group            <chr> "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", …
## $ book_review_link     <chr> "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", …
## $ first_chapter_link   <chr> "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", …
## $ sunday_review_link   <chr> "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", …
## $ article_chapter_link <chr> "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", …
## $ isbns                <list> [<data.frame[2 x 2]>, <data.frame[4 x 2]>, <dat…
## $ buy_links            <list> [<data.frame[6 x 2]>, <data.frame[6 x 2]>, <dat…
## $ book_uri             <chr> "nyt://book/a95afb91-235c-578c-847a-a98d0af7b6a0…

Top Books

books %>%  
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(title, rank) , y = rank)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") +
  labs(
    x = "", y = "",
    title = "Which hardback books are the most popular?"
  ) +
  coord_flip()

Weeks on the top

books %>%  
  ggplot(aes(x = reorder(title, weeks_on_list) , y = weeks_on_list)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity") +
  labs(
    x = "", y = "",
    title = "Which hardback books have been on the top 15 the longest?"
  ) +
  coord_flip()