In ebbertd/existR: Read and write data to Exist.io

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

This vignette will walk you through the process of using this R package to update an attribute on Exist.io.

Setup

The first step is to create an API client on Exist.io. There you have to enter a name for your API and client and provide a redirect URI. To be able to use this R package you have to provide this URI: https://localhost:1410/.

Once you have created your API client you will be provided with a client id and a client secret. Store these as environment variables. You can do so in your .Renviron or set these using the following lines.

# Set environment variables
Sys.setenv(EXIST_CLIENT_ID = "PASTE_YOUR_ID_HERE")
Sys.setenv(EXIST_CLIENT_SECRET = "PASTE_YOUR_SECRET_HERE")

After you set these environment variables you can get started using the package. For this load the package and then authenticate to Exist.io.

# Load package
library(existR)

# Authenticate to Exist.io
etoken <- exist_auth()

Calling the exist_auth function will open a browser window. You will have to sign into Exist.io and then grant access to the R package. Afterwards you will be redirect. However, the redirect URL needs to be changed. Exist.io requires a https redirect URL, but the httr package can only provide a local webserver with http. Therefore, to finish the authentication process you have to change the URL in your browser. Just remove the s in https and the URL will work. This will lead to a file being saved in your working directory that contains your OAuth token.

Attribute ownership

Before an attribute can be updated you have to acquire ownership of this attribute. You can so as shown in the following example.

# Acquire ownership of the 'money_spent' attribute.
exist_acquire_attribute(etoken, "money_spent")

Update an attribute

Once ownership of an attribute has been acquired the attribute can updated. In the following example I will update the money_spent attribute for the 30th of January 2020 to the value of 16.

# Update the attribute
exist_update_attribute(etoken, "money_spent", "2020-01-30", 16)

ebbertd/existR documentation built on March 3, 2020, 8:02 a.m.