Retrieving RSS Feeds Using Google Reader

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I have been working on a new package makeR to help manage Sweave projects where you wish to create multiple versions of documents that are based on a single source. For example, I create lots of monthly and quarterly reports using Sweave and the only differences between versions are a few variables. I have used GNU make and Apache ANT but wanted a 100% R solution. I will have more to write about that project in a few weeks. In the meantime I needed an example I could use publicly which led me to thinking about analyzing R-Bloggers. I wanted to use the RSS feed to get the frequency of posts and the tags and categories used. However, R-Bloggers, like most blogs, limits the RSS feeds to the latest few. Google Reader however keeps them all (or at least a lot more). The only downside is that you need to have a Google Reader account. The source code is hosted on Gist and provided below.

 

source('https://raw.github.com/gist/1606595/269d61dfcc7930f5275a212e11f3c43771ab2591/GoogleReader.R')
rbloggers = getRSSFeed(feedURL="http://r-bloggers.com/feed",			   email="GOOGLE READER EMAIL",			   passwd="GOOGLE READER PASSWORD",			   posts=5000)entries = rbloggers[which(names(rbloggers) == "entry")]length(entries)saveXML(rbloggers, file='rbloggers.xml')
#This will create a data frame with some of the information from the RSS feedposts = data.frame(title=character(0), author=character(0), 				   link=character(0), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)posts[1:length(entries),1:ncol(posts)] = NAposts$published = as.Date(NA)posts.categories = list()for(i in 1:length(entries)) {	entry = entries[[i]]	posts[i,]$title = unclass(xmlChildren(entry[['title']])$text)$value	posts[i,]$author = unclass(xmlChildren(entry[['author']][['name']])$text)$value	posts[i,]$link = xmlAttrs(entry[['link']])[['href']]	posts[i,]$published = as.Date(substr(unclass(		xmlChildren(entry[['published']])$text)$value, 1, 10))	categories = entry[which(names(entry) == "category")]	posts.categories[[i]] = list()	if(length(categories) > 1) { #Ignore the first category as it is used for Google Reader		l = list()		for(j in 2:length(categories)) {			l[(j-1)] = xmlAttrs(categories[[j]])[['term']]		}		posts.categories[[i]] = l	}}

#We'll use Paul Bleicher's calendarHeat function to visualize the number of posts per daysource('https://raw.github.com/tavisrudd/r_users_group_1/master/calendarHeat.R')cal = as.data.frame(table(posts$published))cal$Var1 = as.Date(cal$Var1)calendarHeat(cal$Var1, cal$Freq, color="r2b", varname="Number of Posts on R-Bloggers.com")
#Create a word cloudrequire(wordcloud)ctab = unlist(posts.categories)ctab = unlist(strsplit(ctab, ' '))ctab = as.data.frame(table(ctab))ctab = ctab[-which(ctab$ctab == 'Uncategorized'),]wordcloud(ctab$ctab, ctab$Freq, min.freq=10)
view raw RBloggers.R This Gist brought to you by GitHub.
require(XML)require(RCurl)
#' This function ruturns an XML tree of the RSS feed from the given URL.#'#' This function utilizes the (unofficial) Google Reader API to retrieve RSS#' feeds. The advantage of access RSS feeds through the Google Reader API is that#' you are not limited by the number of entries a website may included in their#' feed. That is, Google maintains generally maintains a complete history of#' entries from the RSS feed. #' #' Note that the contents of the results will be limited by what the website#' provides in their feeds. That is, Google does not contain more information#' per entry then what the website originally provided. If the initial feed#' contained only excerpts of the article, the feed from Google will too only#' contain excerpts. Be aware though that for sites that do provide the complete#' contents of posts will result in potentially very large downloads. #'#' @param feedURL the full URL to the RSS feed.#' @param email the email address for the Google Reader account#' @param passwd the password for the Google Reader account#' @param posts the number of posts to return#' @return the root \code{XMLNode} for the RSS feed.#' @seealso \code{\link{/xmlRoot}} for the format of the returned XML tree#' @export#' @example#' \dontrun{#' rbloggers = getRSSFeed(feedURL="http://r-bloggers.com/feed",#'     email="[email protected]", passwd="PASSWORD")#' }#' @author Jason Bryer <\email{jason@@bryer.org}x>getRSSFeed <- function(feedURL, email, passwd, posts=1000) {	#Authenticate with Google	curlHandle = getCurlHandle(cookiefile="rcookies", ssl.verifyhost=FALSE, ssl.verifypeer=FALSE)	x = postForm("https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin",				 accountType="GOOGLE",				 service="reader",				 Email=email,				 Passwd=passwd,				 source="makeR",				 curl = curlHandle)	gtoken = unlist(strsplit(x, "\n"))	parsed.gtoken <- unlist(strsplit(gtoken[3], "Auth="))	if (length(parsed.gtoken) >= 2) {		auth.token <- unlist(strsplit(gtoken[3], "Auth="))[[2]]	} else {		stop("Authentication failed.")	}	google.auth <- paste("GoogleLogin auth=", auth.token, sep='')
	#Function to retrieve up to 1000 posts	getDoc <- function(n, c=NULL) {		feedURL = paste("http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/", feedURL, "?n=", n, 						ifelse(is.null(c), "", paste("&c=", c, sep='')),						sep='')				feed = getURL(feedURL, .encoding = 'UTF-8', followlocation=TRUE, 					  httpheader=c("Authorization"=google.auth),					  curl=curlHandle)		doc = xmlTreeParse(feed, asText=TRUE)		return(xmlRoot(doc))	}
	root = NULL	continueValue = NULL	for(i in 1:ceiling(posts / 1000)) {		r = getDoc(n=ifelse(i == ceiling(posts / 1000), (posts-1) %% 1000 + 1, 1000), 				   c=continueValue)		if(is.null(root)) {			root = r		} else {			entries = which(xmlSApply(r, xmlName) == 'entry')			if(length(entries) > 0) {				root = addChildren(root, kids=r[entries])			}		}		if(is.null(r[['continuation']])) {			break #No more posts to retrieve		} else {			continueValue = unclass(xmlChildren(r[['continuation']])$text)$value		}	}	return(root)}

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