hockeyR
In hockeyR: Collect and Clean Hockey Stats

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)

Getting started

library(hockeyR)

`load_pbp()`

As mentioned on the home page, the main function of the hockeyR package is to load raw NHL play-by-play data without having to scrape it and clean it yourself. The load_pbp() function will do that for you. The season argument in load_pbp() is very accepting. You may use any of the following syntax when loading play-by-play data for the 2020-21 NHL season:

Full season definitions (ie '2020-2021')
Short seaosn definitions (ie '2020-21')
Single season definitions (ie 2021)

To load more than one season, wrap your desired years in c(). That is, to get data for the last two years, one could enter load_pbp(c(2020,2021)).

`get_game_ids()`

If you want to load play-by-play data for a game that isn't in the data repository, or perhaps you just want a single game and don't need to load a full season, you'll first need to find the numeric game ID. The get_game_ids() function can find it for you as long as you supply it with the date of the game in YYY-MM-DD format. The function defaults to the current date as defined by your operating system.

# get single day ids
get_game_ids(day = "2017-10-17")

You can instead supply a season to get_game_ids() to grab a full year's worth of IDs as well as final scores, home and road teams, and game dates for each game in the given season.

`scrape_game()`

This function scrapes a single game with a supplied game ID, which can be retrieved with get_game_ids(). Live game scraping has yet to undergo testing.

scrape_game(game_id = 2020030175)

`scrape_day()`

This is the backbone function that keeps the hockeyR-data repository up to date during the season. Supply a date (YYY-MM-DD) and it will scrape play-by-play data for all games on that day. Live game scraping is still awaiting testing.

scrape_day("2015-01-06")

If you can wait until the day after a game, the load_pbp() function is the only one you'll need. If you'd like to scrape the data yourself immediately following a game, the other functions discussed here will do the job for you.