Research Guides: DPDS Social Sciences Workshop Resources: Processing JSON Data

Processing JSON Data

Objectives:

1. Describe the JSON data format.
2. Understand where JSON is typically used.
3. Appreciate some advantages of using JSON over tabular data.
4. Appreciate some disadvantages of processing JSON documents.
5. Use the jsonLite package to read a JSON file.
6. Display formatted JSON as dataframe.
7. Select and display nested dataframe fields from a JSON document.
8. Write tabular data from selected elements from a JSON document to a csv file.

Key Points:

1. JSON is a popular data format for transferring data used by a great many Web based APIs.
2. The complex structure of a JSON document means that it cannot easily be ‘flattened’ into tabular data.
3. We can use R code to extract values of interest and place them in a csv file.

Processing JSON Data Video Demonstration
Watch the workshop zoom video demonstration on the basics of JSON, converting JSON to an R data frame, and converting various JSON records into a table. Video length is 18 minutes 13 seconds.
Social Science Workshop Registration
Register for the Social Science Workshop to gain hands-on experience and practice section objectives.

Recommended Guides

Processing JSON Data Guide
Workshop guide provided by Data Carpentry that explains the advantages and disadvantages of JSON, using the JSON package to read a JSON file, and writing the JSON file to csv.
Stack Overflow: A beginner's guide to JSON, the data format for the internet
Provides an overview of what JSON looks like, using JSON in API calls, using JSON files in JavaScript, accessing and modifying JavaScript objects, comparison to YAML and XML, and more.