I am trying to scrape some IMDB data looping through a list of URLs. Unfortunately my output isn't exactly what I hoped for, never mind storing it in a dataframe.
I get URLs with
library(rvest)
topmovies <- read_html("http://www.imdb.com/chart/top")
links <- top250 %>%
html_nodes(".titleColumn") %>%
html_nodes("a") %>%
html_attr("href")
links_full <- paste("http://imdb.com",links,sep="")
links_full_test <- links_full[1:10]
and then I could get content with
lapply(links_full_test, . %>% read_html() %>% html_nodes("h1") %>% html_text())
but it is a nested list and I don't know how to get it into a proper data.frame in R. Similarly, if I wanted to get another attribute, say
%>% read_html() %>% html_nodes("strong span") %>% html_text()
to retrieve the IMDB rating, I get the same nested-list output and most importantly I have to do read_html() twice ... which takes a lot of time. Is there a better way to do this? I guess for-loops, but I can't get it to work that way :(
Here's one approach using purrr and rvest. The key idea is to save the parsed page, and then extract the bits you're interested in.
library(rvest)
library(purrr)
topmovies <- read_html("http://www.imdb.com/chart/top")
links <- topmovies %>%
html_nodes(".titleColumn") %>%
html_nodes("a") %>%
html_attr("href") %>%
xml2::url_absolute("http://imdb.com") %>%
.[1:5] # for testing
pages <- links %>% map(read_html)
title <- pages %>%
map_chr(. %>%
html_nodes("h1") %>%
html_text()
)
rating <- pages %>%
map_dbl(. %>%
html_nodes("strong span") %>%
html_text() %>%
as.numeric()
)
Edit: now with rating as well
library(dplyr)
library(rvest)
s = "http://www.imdb.com/chart/top" %>% html_session
links =
s %>%
html_nodes(".titleColumn a") %>%
html_attr("href") %>%
data_frame(link = .) %>%
slice(1:10) %>%
rowwise %>%
mutate(new_page =
s %>%
jump_to(link) %>%
list,
title =
new_page %>%
html_nodes("h1") %>%
html_text,
rating =
new_page %>%
html_nodes("strong span") %>%
html_text %>%
as.numeric)
Another approach would be to use sapply
as follows:
library(rvest)
s = "http://www.imdb.com/chart/top" %>% html_session
title_links <- function(x) {x %>% html_nodes(".titleColumn a") %>% html_attr("href")}
h1_text <- function(x) {x %>% html_node("h1") %>% html_text(trim=TRUE)}
s %>%
title_links %>%
sapply(. %>% jump_to(s, .) %>% h1_text) %>%
data.frame(text = ., link = names(.), row.names=NULL)
Which results in:
text
1 Die Verurteilten (1994)
2 Der Pate (1972)
3 Der Pate 2 (1974)
4 The Dark Knight (2008)
5 Schindlers Liste (1993)
link
1 /title/tt0111161/?pf_rd_m=A2FGELUUNOQJNL&pf_rd_p=2398042102&pf_rd_r=109KYN8J6HW5TM5Y1P86&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=15506&pf_rd_i=top&ref_=chttp_tt_1
2 /title/tt0068646/?pf_rd_m=A2FGELUUNOQJNL&pf_rd_p=2398042102&pf_rd_r=109KYN8J6HW5TM5Y1P86&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=15506&pf_rd_i=top&ref_=chttp_tt_2
3 /title/tt0071562/?pf_rd_m=A2FGELUUNOQJNL&pf_rd_p=2398042102&pf_rd_r=109KYN8J6HW5TM5Y1P86&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=15506&pf_rd_i=top&ref_=chttp_tt_3
4 /title/tt0468569/?pf_rd_m=A2FGELUUNOQJNL&pf_rd_p=2398042102&pf_rd_r=109KYN8J6HW5TM5Y1P86&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=15506&pf_rd_i=top&ref_=chttp_tt_4
5 /title/tt0108052/?pf_rd_m=A2FGELUUNOQJNL&pf_rd_p=2398042102&pf_rd_r=109KYN8J6HW5TM5Y1P86&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=15506&pf_rd_i=top&ref_=chttp_tt_5