elexr-package {elexr}

Load Associated Press Election Results with Elex

Description

Provides R access to election results data. Wraps elex (https://github.com/newsdev/elex/), a Python package and command line tool for fetching and parsing Associated Press election results.

Details

A light R wrapper around the elex command

elexr provides an R interface for the elex package (http://github.com/newsdev/elex/) to load election results from the Associated Press Elections API.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, this package simply runs elex in a shell and loads the CSV output into a data frame. Because of this, you'll need Python and to install elex by following the instructions at http://elex.readthedocs.org/en/latest/install.html.

You'll also need an API key for the API Elections API. You'll need to set the AP_API_KEY environtment variable in your R session to be able to retreive results.

Examples

library(elexr)
# Set your actual AP Elections API Key here. The string below is an example
# only and won't work.
Sys.setenv(AP_API_KEY = "AZA0AZ0aZ0ZA0az0AzAZ0AzazAzaZaZAZ")
tryCatch({
    ia_results <- results("02-01-2016")
},
error = function(err) {
    print(err)
})