A search on Twitter, some R, and just enough Neo4J.

Disclaimer: of course everything here could be done in pure R. But hey, where’s the fun in that?

Disclaimer bis: this blogpost relies on {neo4r}, a package still under active development.

Get the tweets

library(rtweet)
ny <- search_tweets("#rstatsnyc", n = 3000)

Tweets collected at Sys.time() == “2018-04-25 12:41:49 CEST”

nrow(ny)

## [1] 3000

I might not have everything here (as I’ve reached the limit of 3000 tweets), but let’s dive into this anyway.

Prepare for Neo4J

Let’s get some info:

range(ny$created_at)

## [1] "2018-04-20 18:52:27 UTC" "2018-04-25 09:57:44 UTC"

Here, every tweet was sent in the same month of the same year, so we can keep only the day.

library(dplyr)
ny <- ny %>% mutate(day = lubridate::day(created_at))

Also, as the status_id column is composed of large characters of 18 numbers, let’s recode this column:

library(forcats)
ny <- ny %>% mutate(status_id = fct_anon(as_factor(status_id)), 
                    status_id = as.character(status_id))
# Be sure we still have 3000 observations
length(unique(ny$status_id))

## [1] 3000

The model

Here’s a model of the graph we want to create in Neo4J, made with http://www.apcjones.com/arrows.

Connect to Neo4J

library(neo4r)
con <- neo4j_api$new(url = "http://localhost:7474/", 
                     user = "neo4j", password = "pouetpouet")
# Is the connection working?
con$ping()

## [1] 200

Create the CSV

Let’s create the CSV that will be sent to Neo4J. To do this, we need to:

• Select the info
• Write the csv in my Neo4J home
• Send a query to Neo4J to retrieve and model these CSV

Note: we’re working on a way to natively send csv with {neo4r}, so you won’t have to write in Neo4J home.

library(readr)
# CSV of tweets 
ny %>% 
  select(status_id, day, text, source, 
         lang, favorite_count, retweet_count, 
         is_quote, is_retweet) %>%
  write_csv("~/neo4j/import/ny_tweets.csv")

# CSV of users
ny %>% 
  select(status_id, screen_name) %>%
  write_csv("~/neo4j/import/ny_users.csv")

# CSV of hashtags
ny %>% 
  select(status_id, hashtags) %>%
  tidyr::unnest() %>% 
  na.omit() %>%
  write_csv("~/neo4j/import/ny_hastags.csv")

# CSV of mentions
ny %>% 
  select(status_id, mentions_screen_name) %>%
  tidyr::unnest() %>% 
  na.omit() %>%
  write_csv("~/neo4j/import/ny_mentions.csv")

# CSV of replies
ny %>% 
  select(status_id, reply_to_status_id) %>%
  na.omit() %>%
  write_csv("~/neo4j/import/ny_replies.csv")

Before reading the file in Neo4J, we should add some constraints to ensure the nodes are unique. If you’re not familiar with this terminology, a constraint is a property that will ensure that every label is unique: for example, here, we will have to ensure that every status_id is unique.

Hence, if we try to create a node with a status_id that already exists, this writting process will fail (and that’s the reason why we are using MERGE for writting the nodes with constraints).

'CREATE CONSTRAINT ON (t:Tweet) ASSERT t.name IS UNIQUE' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

'CREATE CONSTRAINT ON (d:Day) ASSERT d.name IS UNIQUE' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

'CREATE CONSTRAINT ON (u:User) ASSERT u.name IS UNIQUE' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

'CREATE CONSTRAINT ON (h:Hashtag) ASSERT h.name IS UNIQUE' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

Note: the messages returned ## No data returned. are due to the fact that we haven’t retrieved anything from the DB, neither stats about the call (which could be retrieved with the include_stats arguments) nor data.

Importing the csv to the DB:

• With include_stats = TRUE:

# Tweets but no day
'USING PERIODIC COMMIT 500
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///ny_tweets.csv" AS csvLine
MERGE (t:Tweet { name: csvLine.status_id, text: csvLine.text, source: csvLine.source, lang: csvLine.lang, favorite_count: toInteger(csvLine.favorite_count), retweet_count: toInteger(csvLine.retweet_count), is_quote: toBoolean(csvLine.is_quote), is_retweet: toBoolean(csvLine.is_retweet)});' %>%
  call_api(con, include_stats = TRUE)

## No data returned.

## # A tibble: 12 x 2
##    type                   value
##    <chr>                  <dbl>
##  1 contains_updates          1.
##  2 nodes_created          3000.
##  3 nodes_deleted             0.
##  4 properties_set        24000.
##  5 relationships_created     0.
##  6 relationship_deleted      0.
##  7 labels_added           3000.
##  8 labels_removed            0.
##  9 indexes_added             0.
## 10 indexes_removed           0.
## 11 constraints_added         0.
## 12 constraints_removed       0.

• Without:

# Days 
'USING PERIODIC COMMIT 500
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///ny_tweets.csv" AS csvLine
MERGE (d:Day {name : csvLine.day} )
WITH csvLine
MATCH (t:Tweet {name: csvLine.status_id})
MATCH (d:Day {name : csvLine.day} )
MERGE (t) -[:WAS_SENT]->(d);' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

# Users
'USING PERIODIC COMMIT 500
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///ny_users.csv" AS csvLine
MERGE (u:User { name: csvLine.screen_name})
WITH csvLine
MATCH (u:User { name: csvLine.screen_name})
MATCH (t:Tweet {name : csvLine.status_id})
MERGE (u) -[:SENT]-> (t);' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

# Hashtags
'USING PERIODIC COMMIT 500
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///ny_hastags.csv" AS csvLine
MERGE (h:Hashtag { name: csvLine.hashtags})
WITH csvLine
MATCH (t:Tweet {name : csvLine.status_id})
MATCH (h:Hashtag { name: csvLine.hashtags})
MERGE (t) -[:CONTAINS]-> (h);' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

# Mentions
'USING PERIODIC COMMIT 500
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///ny_mentions.csv" AS csvLine
MERGE (m:User { name: csvLine.mentions_screen_name})
WITH csvLine
MATCH (t:Tweet {name : csvLine.status_id})
MATCH (m:User { name: csvLine.mentions_screen_name})
MERGE (t) -[:MENTIONS]-> (m);' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

# Replies
'USING PERIODIC COMMIT 500
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///ny_replies.csv" AS csvLine
MERGE (t:Tweet { name: csvLine.reply_to_status_id})
WITH csvLine
MATCH (t:Tweet {name : csvLine.status_id})
MATCH (r:Tweet {name: csvLine.reply_to_status_id})
MERGE (t) -[:REPLIES_TO]-> (r);' %>%
  call_api(con)

## No data returned.

Let’s see what we’ve got:

con$get_constraints()

## # A tibble: 4 x 3
##   label   type       property_keys
##   <chr>   <chr>      <chr>        
## 1 User    UNIQUENESS name         
## 2 Hashtag UNIQUENESS name         
## 3 Tweet   UNIQUENESS name         
## 4 Day     UNIQUENESS name

con$get_labels()

## # A tibble: 4 x 1
##   labels 
##   <chr>  
## 1 Tweet  
## 2 User   
## 3 Hashtag
## 4 Day

con$get_relationships()

## # A tibble: 5 x 1
##   relationships
##   <chr>        
## 1 WAS_SENT     
## 2 SENT         
## 3 CONTAINS     
## 4 MENTIONS     
## 5 REPLIES_TO

Let’s explore

Check check

Let’s start with a check to see if we have everything:

# Have we got all the tweets?
length(unique(c(ny$status_id, ny$reply_to_status_id)))

## [1] 3041

'MATCH (t:Tweet) RETURN COUNT(t) AS tweets_count' %>%
  call_api(con)

## $tweets_count
## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##   value
##   <int>
## 1  3041

# Have we got all the Days?
length(unique(ny$day))

## [1] 6

'MATCH (d:Day) RETURN COUNT(d) AS days_count' %>%
  call_api(con)

## $days_count
## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##   value
##   <int>
## 1     6

# Do we have all the users ? 
length(unique(ny$screen_name))

## [1] 1021

'MATCH (u:User) RETURN COUNT(u) AS Users_count' %>%
  call_api(con)

## $Users_count
## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##   value
##   <int>
## 1  1088

# All the hashtags? 
ny %>% 
  select(status_id, hashtags) %>%
  tidyr::unnest() %>% 
  na.omit() %>%
  distinct(hashtags) %>%
  nrow()

## [1] 177

'MATCH (h:Hashtag) RETURN COUNT(h) AS Hash_count' %>%
  call_api(con)

## $Hash_count
## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##   value
##   <int>
## 1   177

Ok, so now that we have our data ready, let’s explore a little bit.

Who tweeted the most?

library(purrr)
'MATCH (t:Tweet) <- [:SENT] - (u:User) 
RETURN u.name AS name, COUNT(u) AS count
ORDER BY COUNT(u) DESC
LIMIT 10' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("user", "n"))

## # A tibble: 10 x 2
##    user               n
##    <chr>          <int>
##  1 anushasharma9x   275
##  2 SK_convergence   172
##  3 robinson_es      110
##  4 christinezhang   105
##  5 rstatsbot1234     95
##  6 NoorDinTech       94
##  7 drob              71
##  8 b3njana           55
##  9 jaredlander       48
## 10 LaurusT001        43

You might see something surprising here: why do we have to bind_cols? By design, {neo4r} does not bind columns for you, for the simple reason that you can retrieve information that might not fit into a single tidy data.frame.

Let’s put it straight into a dataviz:

library(ggplot2)
'MATCH (t:Tweet) <- [:SENT] - (u:User) 
RETURN u.name AS name, COUNT(u) AS count
ORDER BY COUNT(u) DESC
LIMIT 10' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("user", "n")) %>%
  ggplot() +
  aes(reorder(user, n), n) + 
  geom_col(fill = viridis::plasma(1)) + 
  coord_flip() +
  labs(x = "user",y = "tweets") +
  theme_minimal()

Daily tweets

How many tweets by day?

'MATCH (t:Tweet) - [:WAS_SENT] -> (d:Day) 
RETURN d.name AS day, COUNT(d) AS count' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("day", "n")) %>%
  mutate(day  = as.numeric(day)) %>%
  ggplot() +
  aes(day, n) + 
  geom_col(fill = viridis::cividis(1)) + 
  labs(x = "day",y = "tweets") +
  theme_minimal()

What are the most used hashtags?

(excluding rstatsnyc, of course)

'MATCH (t:Tweet) -[r:CONTAINS]->(h:Hashtag) 
WHERE NOT h.name = "rstatsnyc"
RETURN h.name as Hash, COUNT(h) AS count
ORDER BY COUNT(h) DESC
LIMIT 10' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("hashtags", "n"))

## # A tibble: 10 x 2
##    hashtags         n
##    <chr>        <int>
##  1 rstats         582
##  2 nycdatamafia   102
##  3 RStatsNYC       73
##  4 rladies         72
##  5 python          42
##  6 tidyverse       36
##  7 Rladies         19
##  8 datascience     17
##  9 rstatsNYC       14
## 10 RforEveryone    10

How many @drob or @robinson_es tweets?

(because apparently they were fighting 🙂 ):

Get the number of tweets:

'MATCH (t:Tweet) <- [:SENT] - (u:User) 
WHERE u.name = "drob" OR u.name = "robinson_es" 
RETURN COUNT(u) AS count, u.name' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("n", "user"))

## # A tibble: 2 x 2
##       n user       
##   <int> <chr>      
## 1    71 drob       
## 2   110 robinson_es

Get the average number of retweets:

'MATCH (t:Tweet) <- [:SENT] - (u:User) 
WHERE u.name = "drob" OR u.name = "robinson_es" 
RETURN u.name AS user, COUNT(u) AS count, AVG(t.retweet_count) as mean' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("user", "n", "mean_RT"))

## # A tibble: 2 x 3
##   user            n mean_RT
##   <chr>       <int>   <dbl>
## 1 drob           71    12.8
## 2 robinson_es   110    10.1

Create a function…

… to get the number of tweets by a user

get_tweet_count <- function(who){
  paste0('MATCH (t:Tweet) <- [:SENT] - (u:User {name: "', who, '"}) 
  RETURN COUNT(t) AS ', who, ";") %>% 
  call_api(con)
}
get_tweet_count("RLadiesNYC")

## $RLadiesNYC
## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##   value
##   <int>
## 1    12

Who are the users who…

… are mentionned in a tweet containing the hashtag #Rladies?

'MATCH (u:User) <- [m:MENTIONS] - (t:Tweet) - [:CONTAINS]-> (:Hashtag {name : "Rladies"})
RETURN u AS Name, COUNT(u) AS n' %>% 
  call_api(con) %>%
  bind_cols() %>%
  set_names(c("user", "n")) %>%
  arrange(desc(n)) %>%
  top_n(5)

## Selecting by n

## # A tibble: 6 x 2
##   user               n
##   <chr>          <int>
## 1 robinson_es       11
## 2 AnushkaSharma      6
## 3 SK_convergence     6
## 4 RLadiesNYC         6
## 5 drob               5
## 6 jtrnyc             5

… were mentions in a tweet containing the hashtag #rdogs :

library(ggraph)
'MATCH (u:User) <- [m:MENTIONS] - (t:Tweet) - [:CONTAINS]-> (:Hashtag {name : "rdogs"})
RETURN u, m, t' %>% 
  call_api(con, type = "graph")  %>% 
  convert_to("igraph") %>%
  ggraph() + 
  geom_edge_link()+
  geom_node_label(aes(label = name, 
                      color = group)) +
  labs(title = "#rdogs and #rstatsnyc",
       subtitle = "data from Twitter",
       caption = "@_colinfay") + 
  theme_graph() 

… mention @RLadiesNYC

library(ggraph)
'MATCH (u:User) - [s:SENT] -> (t:Tweet) -[m:MENTIONS]-> (r:User {name:"RLadiesNYC"}) 
RETURN u, s, m, r' %>% 
  call_api(con, type = "graph")  %>% 
  convert_to("igraph") %>%
  ggraph() + 
  geom_edge_link()+
  geom_node_label(aes(label = name, 
                      color = group)) +
  labs(title = "Mentions of RLadiesNYC",
       subtitle = "data from Twitter",
       caption = "@_colinfay") + 
  theme_graph() 

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