--- title: "Functions Overview" output: rmarkdown::html_vignette vignette: > %\VignetteIndexEntry{Functions Overview} %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown} %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8} --- ```{r, include = FALSE} knitr::opts_chunk$set( collapse = TRUE, comment = "#>" ) ``` The goal of **ralger** is to facilitate web scraping in R. For a quick video tutorial, I gave a talk at useR2020, which you can find [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHi6E8jegQg) ## Installation You can install the `ralger` package from [CRAN](https://cran.r-project.org/) with: ```{r eval=FALSE} install.packages("ralger") ``` or you can install the development version from [GitHub](https://github.com/) with: ``` r # install.packages("devtools") devtools::install_github("feddelegrand7/ralger") ``` ## `scrap()` This is an example which shows how to extract [top ranked universities' names](http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2020.html) according to the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy: ```{r example} library(ralger) my_link <- "http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2020.html" my_node <- "#UniversityRanking a" # The class ID , we recommend SelectorGadget best_uni <- scrap(link = my_link, node = my_node) head(best_uni, 10) ``` Thanks to the [robotstxt](https://github.com/ropensci/robotstxt), you can set `askRobot = T` to ask the `robots.txt` file if it's permitted to scrape a specific web page. If you want to scrap multiple list pages, just use `scrap()` in conjunction with `paste0()`. ## `table_scrap()` If you want to extract an __HTML Table__, you can use the `table_scrap()` function. Take a look at this [webpage](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross/?area=XWW) which lists the highest gross revenues in the cinema industry. You can extract the HTML table as follows: ```{r} data <- table_scrap(link ="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross/?area=XWW") head(data) ``` __When you deal with a web page that contains many HTML table you can use the `choose` argument to target a specific table__ ## `tidy_scrap()` Sometimes you'll find some useful information on the internet that you want to extract in a tabular manner however these information are not provided in an HTML format. In this context, you can use the `tidy_scrap()` function which returns a tidy data frame according to the arguments that you introduce. The function takes four arguments: - **link** : the link of the website you're interested for; - **nodes**: a vector of CSS elements that you want to extract. These elements will form the columns of your data frame; - **colnames**: this argument represents the vector of names you want to assign to your columns. Note that you should respect the same order as within the **nodes** vector; - **clean**: if true the function will clean the tibble's columns; - **askRobot**: ask the robots.txt file if it's permitted to scrape the web page. ### Example We'll work on the famous [IMDb website](https://www.imdb.com/). Let's say we need a data frame composed of: - The title of the 50 best ranked movies of all time - Their release year - Their rating We will need to use the `tidy_scrap()` function as follows: ```{r example3, message=FALSE, warning=FALSE} my_link <- "https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?groups=top_250&sort=user_rating" my_nodes <- c( ".lister-item-header a", # The title ".text-muted.unbold", # The year of release ".ratings-imdb-rating strong" # The rating) ) names <- c("title", "year", "rating") # respect the nodes order tidy_scrap(link = my_link, nodes = my_nodes, colnames = names) ``` Note that all columns will be of *character* class. you'll have to convert them according to your needs. ## `titles_scrap()` Using `titles_scrap()`, one can efficiently scrape titles which correspond to the _h1, h2 & h3_ HTML tags. ### Example If we go to the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/), we can easily extract the titles displayed within a specific web page : ```{r example4} titles_scrap(link = "https://www.nytimes.com/") ``` Further, it's possible to filter the results using the `contain` argument: ```{r} titles_scrap(link = "https://www.nytimes.com/", contain = "TrUMp", case_sensitive = FALSE) ``` ## `paragraphs_scrap()` In the same way, we can use the `paragraphs_scrap()` function to extract paragraphs. This function relies on the `p` HTML tag. Let's get some paragraphs from the lovely [ropensci.org](https://ropensci.org/) website: ```{r} paragraphs_scrap(link = "https://ropensci.org/") ``` If needed, it's possible to collapse the paragraphs into one bag of words: ```{r} paragraphs_scrap(link = "https://ropensci.org/", collapse = TRUE) ``` ## `weblink_scrap()` `weblink_scrap()` is used to srape the web links available within a web page. Useful in some cases, for example, getting a list of the available PDFs: ```{r} weblink_scrap(link = "https://www.worldbank.org/en/access-to-information/reports/", contain = "PDF", case_sensitive = FALSE) ``` ## `images_scrap() ` and `images_preview()` `images_preview()` allows you to scrape the URLs of the images available within a web page so that you can choose which images __extension__ (see below) you want to focus on. Let's say we want to list all the images from the official [RStudio](https://rstudio.com/) website: ```{r} images_preview(link = "https://rstudio.com/") ``` `images_scrap()` on the other hand download the images. It takes the following arguments: + **link**: The URL of the web page; + **imgpath**: The destination folder of your images. It defaults to `getwd()` + **extn**: the extension of the image: jpg, png, jpeg ... among others; + **askRobot**: ask the robots.txt file if it's permitted to scrape the web page. In the following example we extract all the `png` images from [RStudio](https://rstudio.com/) : ```{r, eval=FALSE} # Suppose we're in a project which has a folder called my_images: images_scrap(link = "https://rstudio.com/", imgpath = here::here("my_images"), extn = "png") # without the . ``` The images will be downloaded into the folder `here::here("myimages")`. ## Code of Conduct Please note that the ralger project is released with a [Contributor Code of Conduct](https://contributor-covenant.org/version/2/0/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.html). By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.