RWebData: A High-Level Interface to the Programmable Web

Abstract

The rise of the programmable web offers new opportunities for the empirically driven sciences. The access to, compilation and preparation of data from the programmable web for statistical analysis can, however, involve substantial up-front costs for the practical researcher. The R-package RWebData provides a high-level framework that allows data to be easily collected from the programmable web in a format that can be used directly for statistical analysis in R without bothering about the data’s initial format and nesting structure. It was developed specifically for users who have no experience with web technologies and merely use R as statistics software. This paper provides an overview of the high-level functions, explains the basic architecture of the package, illustrates the implemented data mapping algorithm, and discusses RWebData’s further development and reuse potential.