In kyeager4/libguidesAPI: Unofficial LibGuides API Wrapper

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)

Before You Use

The LibGuides V1.1 API requires a LibGuides CMS subscription, so if your institution does not have a CMS subscription, you will not be able to use this package.

Your site ID and API key can be found in your LibGuides system under Tools > API. Go to the Endpoints V1.1 tab, then click the GET Guides link.

Basic Use

Guides

Retrieve all guides in your system (replace your_siteid and your_key with your institution's site ID and API key):

myguides <- get_guides_data(siteID=your_siteid, 
                            key=your_key,
                            expand_pages=FALSE)

Retrieve all guide pages in your system:

myguidepages <- get_guides_data(siteID=your_siteid, 
                                key=your_key,
                                expand_pages=TRUE)

Assets

The GET assets API by default retrieves all asset types; however, this results in a massive download. If you are interested in downloading book assets, database assets, or file assets, then the functions get_book_assets(), get_database_assets(), and get_file_assets() are convenience functions for retrieving those asset types, respectively.

mybooks <- get_book_assets(siteID=your_siteid, 
                            key=your_key)

If desired, the options argument can be used to specify other querystring parameters as described on the API page in your LibGuides system. For example, if I wanted to retrieve all document/file assets that appear on the SAS Tutorials (guide ID: 278271) and SPSS Tutorials (guide ID: 278275) LibGuides, I could run:

myfiles <- get_file_assets(siteID=your_siteid, 
                           key=your_key,
                           options="&guide_ids[]=278271&guide_ids[]=278275")

Note that the string you supply to the options argument will almost always start with an ampersand (&).

Advanced Usage

To retrieve other asset types, you will want to use the call_LG_api() function. The GET assets API querystring parameter asset_types can be used to filter the asset types to one or more specific types, using the following codes:

1 - Rich Text/HTML
2 - Link
3 - RSS Feed
4 - Document / File
5 - Book from the Catalog
6 - Poll
7 - Google Search
9 - Media / Widget
10 - Database
11 - Guide List
12 - LibAnswers Widget
13 - LibWizard Item

For example, to get a list of link assets:

#' Make API call - returns JSON output
mylinks <- call_LG_api(siteID=your_siteid,
                       key=your_key,
                       content="assets",
                       options="&asset_types=2")

#' Convert JSON output to dataframe
mylinks <- jsonlite::fromJSON(mylinks)
mylinks <- jsonlite::flatten(mylinks)