README.md

In RichCotler/nntpr: Package providing an R interface to python nntplib functions via reticulate

nntpr

Rich Cotler

January, 2019

The nntpr R package is an in-progress project that I started with some basic personal objectives in mind:

• learn how to develop R packages
• develop some simple nntp utility and analysis functions
• learn how to integrate python code and objects with R

The python integration was a side effect of my choice of working with nntp. I didn't run across any native NNTP protocol libraries or methods in R, but base python has an nntplib that fit the bill nicely. I know I could have written the equivalent of nntpr completely in python, but that wouldn't have satisfied my first objective.

The application runs in R Studio It is written in R (developed using version 3.5.1) and requires installation of the following CRAN libraries:

R.utils,
htmltools,
htmlwidgets,
purrr,
readr,
reticulate,
rlist,
stats,
stringr,
timevis,
uuid

The first functions to use out of the gate are:

connect - log on to a usenet server

`myconn = connect("news.example.nntpserver.com", "8080", "exampleu", "examplep!", "True")`

select a newsgroup to examine

`group("comp.lang.python")`

which returns

[1] "211" "536051" "2" "536052" "comp.lang.python"

The group information vector (above) contains:

nntp server response (211)  
total articles in the newsgroup (536,051)  
first article number (2)  
last article number (536052)
the name of the newsgroup (comp.lang.python)(

While there are a number of lower level functions that interface with the python nntplib, I wrote a function that uses nntpr to produce an example report on the characteristics of a chosen newsgroup. See the groupdatevolume function documentation for details.

Here's an example of groupdatevolume function reports for comp.lang.python:

myreports <- groupdatevolume(wordcloud = TRUE)

myreports[[1]]

myreports[[2]]

The option to override the wordcloud2 minSize parameter has been added, with a default value of 3. minSize is ignored if wordcloud isn't requested, and set to the default if a non-integer minSize is specified.

minsize1 <- groupdatevolume(wordcloud = TRUE, minSize = 1) minsize1[[2]]

minsize10 <- groupdatevolume(wordcloud = TRUE, minSize = 10) minsize10[[2]]

This is a work in progress. More functionality and documentation as time permits.

RichCotler/nntpr documentation built on May 31, 2019, 1:48 a.m.