Message-ID: <20120913002129.53690@gmx.com>
Date: 2012-09-13T00:21:28Z
From: Eric Fail
Subject: Parsing "back" to API strcuture
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