[R] Parsing "back" to API strcuture

[jim holtman]

This is close, but it does quote the header names, but does produce
the same dataframe when read back in:

> RAW.API <- structure("id,event_arm,name,dob,pushed_text,pushed_calc,complete\n\"01\",\"event_1_arm_1\",\"John\",\"1979-05-01\",\"\",\"\",2\n\"01\",\"event_2_arm_1\",\"John\",\"2012-09-02\",\"abc\",\"123\",1\n\"01\",\"event_3_arm_1\",\"John\",\"2012-09-10\",\"\",\"\",2\n\"02\",\"event_1_arm_1\",\"Mary\",\"1951-09-10\",\"def\",\"456\",2\n\"02\",\"event_2_arm_1\",\"Mary\",\"1978-09-12\",\"\",\"\",2\n", "`Content-Type`" = structure(c("text/html", "utf-8"), .Names = c("", "charset")))
> x <- read.csv(textConnection(RAW.API), as.is = TRUE)
> x
  id     event_arm name        dob pushed_text pushed_calc complete
1  1 event_1_arm_1 John 1979-05-01                      NA        2
2  1 event_2_arm_1 John 2012-09-02         abc         123        1
3  1 event_3_arm_1 John 2012-09-10                      NA        2
4  2 event_1_arm_1 Mary 1951-09-10         def         456        2
5  2 event_2_arm_1 Mary 1978-09-12                      NA        2
>
> # now put it back into the same string; write.csv does quote alphanumerics
> write.csv(x, textConnection('output', 'w'), row.names = FALSE)
> x.out <- paste(output, collapse = '\n')
> # read it back in to show it is the same
> x.in <- read.csv(textConnection(x.out), as.is = TRUE)
> x.in
  id     event_arm name        dob pushed_text pushed_calc complete
1  1 event_1_arm_1 John 1979-05-01                      NA        2
2  1 event_2_arm_1 John 2012-09-02         abc         123        1
3  1 event_3_arm_1 John 2012-09-10                      NA        2
4  2 event_1_arm_1 Mary 1951-09-10         def         456        2
5  2 event_2_arm_1 Mary 1978-09-12                      NA        2
>


On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Eric Fail <eric.fail at gmx.us> wrote:
> Dear R experts,
>
> I'm reading data from an online database via API and it gets delivered in this messy comma separated structure,
>
>> RAW.API <- structure("id,event_arm,name,dob,pushed_text,pushed_calc,complete\n\"01\",\"event_1_arm_1\",\"John\",\"1979-05-01\",\"\",\"\",2\n\"01\",\"event_2_arm_1\",\"John\",\"2012-09-02\",\"abc\",\"123\",1\n\"01\",\"event_3_arm_1\",\"John\",\"2012-09-10\",\"\",\"\",2\n\"02\",\"event_1_arm_1\",\"Mary\",\"1951-09-10\",\"def\",\"456\",2\n\"02\",\"event_2_arm_1\",\"Mary\",\"1978-09-12\",\"\",\"\",2\n", "`Content-Type`" = structure(c("text/html", "utf-8"), .Names = c("", "charset")))
>
> I have this script that nicely parses it into a data frame,
>
>> (df <- read.table(file = textConnection(RAW.API), header = TRUE,
> sep = ",", na.strings = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE))
>>   id     event_arm name        dob pushed_text pushed_calc complete
>> 1  1 event_1_arm_1 John 1979-05-01        <NA>          NA        2
>> 2  1 event_2_arm_1 John 2012-09-02         abc         123        1
>> 3  1 event_3_arm_1 John 2012-09-10        <NA>          NA        2
>> 4  2 event_1_arm_1 Mary 1951-09-10         def         456        2
>> 5  2 event_2_arm_1 Mary 1978-09-12        <NA>          NA        2
>
> I then do some calculations and write them to pushed_text and pushed_calc whereafter I need to format the data back to the messy comma separated structure it came in.
>
> I imagine something like this,
>
>> API.back <- `some magic command`(df, ...)
>
>> identical(RAW.API, API.back)
>> [1] TRUE
>
> Some command that can format my data from the data frame I made, df, back to the structure that the raw API-object came in, RAW.API.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks for reading.
>
> Eric
>
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-- 
Jim Holtman
Data Munger Guru

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Tell me what you want to do, not how you want to do it.