using rvest and purrr::map_df to build a dataframe

(building on my own question and its answer by @astrofunkswag here)

I am webscraping webpages with rvest and turning the collected data into a dataframe using purrr::map_df. I run into the problem that map_df selects only the first element of html tags with multiple elements. Ideally, I would like all elements of a tag to be captured in the resulting dataframe, and the tags with fewer elements to be recycled.

Take the following code:

library(rvest)
library(tidyverse)

urls <- list("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Barcelona",
             "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome")
h <- urls %>% map(read_html)

out <- h %>% map_df(~{
  a <- html_nodes(., "#firstHeading") %>% html_text()
  b <- html_nodes(., ".toctext") %>% html_text()

  a <- ifelse(length(a) == 0, NA, a)
  b <- ifelse(length(b) == 0, NA, b)

  df <- tibble(a, b)
})
out

which produces the following output:

> out
# A tibble: 2 x 2
  a            b        
  <chr>        <chr>    
1 FC Barcelona History  
2 Rome         Etymology
>

This output is not desired, because it includes only the first element of the tags corresponding to b. In the source webpages, the elements associated to b are the subtitles of the webpage. The desired output looks more or less like this:

  a            b        
  <chr>        <chr>    
1 FC Barcelona History  
2 FC Barcelona  1899–1922: Beginnings  
3 FC Barcelona 1923–1957: Rivera, Republic and Civil War  
.
.
6 Rome         Etymology
7 Rome         History
8 Rome         Earliest history
.
.
>

From ?ifelse

ifelse returns a value with the same shape as test

For example, see

ifelse(FALSE, 20, 1:5)
#[1] 1

As the length(FALSE) is 1, only the first value of 1:5 is selected which is 1.

Similarly, when you are doing

ifelse(length(a) == 0, NA, a)

length(length(a) == 0) is 1 and hence only the first value of a is returned.

In this case we can use if instead of ifelse since we have only one element to check because

if(FALSE) 20 else 1:5 #returns
#[1] 1 2 3 4 5

So it will give you the output by doing

library(tidyverse)
library(rvest)

h %>% map_df(~{
   a <- html_nodes(., "#firstHeading") %>% html_text()
   b <- html_nodes(., ".toctext") %>% html_text()
   a <- if (length(a) == 0) NA else a
   b <- if (length(b) == 0) NA else b
  tibble(a,b)
}) 


#    a            b                                        
#   <chr>        <chr>                                    
# 1 FC Barcelona History                                  
# 2 FC Barcelona 1899–1922: Beginnings                    
# 3 FC Barcelona 1923–1957: Rivera, Republic and Civil War
# 4 FC Barcelona 1957–1978: Club de Fútbol Barcelona      
# 5 FC Barcelona 1978–2000: Núñez and stabilization       
# 6 FC Barcelona The Dream Team era                       
# 7 FC Barcelona 2000–2008: Exit Núñez, enter Laporta     
# 8 FC Barcelona 2008–2012: Guardiola era                 
# 9 FC Barcelona 2014–present: Bartomeu era               
#10 FC Barcelona Support                                  
# … with 78 more rows