bggAPI {bggAnalytics}

Interface for BoardGameGeek's XML API2

Description

This is a class that works as a main interface to BoardGameGeek's API. All other bgg* classes inherit from bggAPI. Furthermore, there is no initialization method for bggAPI as it serves just as a super class for other classes.

Active bindings

ids

Numeric vector of positive integers. Contains IDs of all BoardGameGeek items that were requested and are present in data. The vector is sorted by default.

data

Data.table with currently fetched variables from the object's XML. It has a row count equal to the length of ids. Note that the copy is returned, so no modification of data is possible outside of class methods.

xml

An XML nodeset obtained through the BoardGameGeek's API. It's length is equal to the length of ids.

api_url

A character vector of one or more strings with URLs used to fetch XMLs.

params

A list with object parameters.

timestamp

The date (with time) of the object creation and, what follows, the last moment that the data was certainly up to date.

Methods

Public methods

• bggAPI$fetch()

• bggAPI$expand()

• bggAPI$switch_namestyle()

• bggAPI$clone()

Method fetch()

Fetches variables with given variable_names from the object's xml. Returns them as a list. This is a main method of getting non-scalar variables (as they are hard to fit into a data.table).

Usage

bggAPI$fetch(variable_names = NULL, compress = FALSE)

Arguments

variable_names

a character vector with names of variables to fetch.

compress

a logical value, decides whether the fetched variables should be compress into a scalar form (if possible).

Method expand()

Expands the data table by given variable_names by reference. For the list of available variables for every object check the bgg_variables dataset.

Usage

bggAPI$expand(variable_names = NULL)

Arguments

variable_names

a character vector with names of variables to add to data.

Method switch_namestyle()

Switches between two styles of naming the variables: 'classic' and 'pretty'. The former is a default value and uses code names concordant with BoardGameGeek's naming convention in the XMLs. The latter is more intuitive and uses UpperCamelCase.

Usage

bggAPI$switch_namestyle(to)

Arguments

to

a single string, either 'classic' or 'pretty'.

Returns

Returns TRUE or FALSE invisibly depending on whether the names have been switched.

Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

bggAPI$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

deep

Whether to make a deep clone.

References

BoardGameGeek XML API2