getting_api_key: Getting your api key and making sure the package works.
In RMHogervorst/musicgraph: Interface With Musicgraph.com Through R

Description Details See Also

It took me a while to find out how you get your api key. So I wrote this little documentation. For every request to musicgraph you will need an api key. The good thing is, that you can register on https://developer.musicgraph.com and for most uses you can use the key for free. There is a rate limit of 50 calls per minute and you cannot use social features.

Instructions on how to find the key online.

First create an account then log in go to dashboard click on applications *optional fill in some details about the app. (if you like) copy the key to a secure location.

Where to put the key.

You can work with a loose key if you supply it with every call. However this is tedious work and not to mention insecure. The key you recieve is a secret and it's best not to share the secred with others or leave the key hanging around. However, everything you type in the console is written to the .rhistory file in the project home directory. If you accidentely share that file to github, your key is on the internet. Following best practices that should work for every OS this package looks in Sys.getinv(), and those setting are either set during a session or loaded from files, in particular R searches for a .Renviron file in the base folder of your filesystem. For windows users that is usually something like C://My_documents. But don't guess, use the R-command: path.expand("~") and go to that folder. search for a file called .Renviron (it starts with a dot) and may be hidden. But R can see it, so if you navigate to that folder in R you will see the file. If the file does not exist (that can happen) you can create it. Make a simple text file with a text editor (not Microsoft word, less fancy is better). Add a line which says: MUSICGRAPH_KEY (all capital letters) followed by a equal sign "=" and then your key. For instance (these are random letters and numbers so this key doesn't work) MUSICGRAPH_KEY = "edx143owa9nv5moebgitcdhfd08lo886"

Restart R and the package and the key is loaded. There is nothing that you have to do afterwards, for every call the program searches for the key and adds it to your request.

TLDR: This package looks for the key MUSICGRAPH_KEY (all caps) in the sys.env, you set that key by navigating to the file .Renviron in path.expand("~"). If there is no .Renviron there, create a new file and add the following entry MUSICGRAPH_KEY = "edx143owa9nv5moebgitcdhfd08lo886" Where you change the key to the key that YOU use. Restart R (ctrl/cmd + shift + f10). You are good to go.

For more info about api packages best practices check the vignette of the httr package https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/httr/vignettes/api-packages.html

Other general_documentation: musicgraph

RMHogervorst/musicgraph documentation built on May 8, 2019, 7:33 a.m.