R/getData.R

In stephaniereinders/RPlaystoreScraping:

#' Scrape Google Play Store search results
#'
#' @param search_term getData will search the Google Play Store for apps using this search term
#' @import rvest xml2
#' @importFrom purrr map_df
#' @export
#' @return A data frame of the data scaped from each app page for each app on the search results page.
#' @examples
#' getData("steganography")

getData <- function(search_term){

  # get url for search_term
  search_url <- paste0("https://play.google.com/store/search?q=", search_term,"&c=apps")

  # get html of search_url page
  html <- read_html(search_url)

  # get links of all apps listed on search_url
  links <- html %>%
    rvest::html_nodes('body') %>%
    xml2::xml_find_all("//a[contains(@class, 'poRVub')]") %>%
    html_attr("href")

  # convert to list
  links <- as.list(links)

  # add "https://play.google.com" to begining of each link
  links <- lapply(links, function (x) (paste0("https://play.google.com", x)))

  # get the data for each app on the search_url page
  details <- lapply(links, function (x)(getData_SingleApp(x)))

  # Convert from list of lists to a data frame
  data <- map_df(details, function (x) as.data.frame(x, stringsAsFactors=FALSE))

  return(data)

}