RedditExtractoR

An R wrapper for Reddit API. This package can be used extract data from Reddit and construct structured datasets.

Installation

The package can be installed directly from CRAN, using install.packages("RedditExtractoR")

Functions

reddit_urls - used to extract URLs of Reddit threads of interest.

Example:

reddit_links <- reddit_urls(
  search_terms   = "cute_cats",
  page_threshold = 1
)

str(reddit_links)
'data.frame':	25 obs. of  5 variables:
 $ date        : chr  "05-02-15" "24-02-14" "03-09-13" "20-05-14" ...
 $ num_comments: num  214 26 221 36 44 41 93 199 20 175 ...
 $ title       : chr  "My brother's cat is insanely cute!" "flying little cute cat" "All you guys have cute cats, and I'm stuck with this derp" "All you guys have cute cats, and I'm stuck with this derp" ...
 $ subreddit   : chr  "cats" "cats" "cats" "cats" ...
 $ URL         : chr  "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/2uv9q5/my_brothers_cat_is_insanely_cute/?ref=search_posts" "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/1ys6gg/flying_little_cute_cat/?ref=search_posts" "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/1lnmcy/all_you_guys_have_cute_cats_and_im_stuck_with/?ref=search_posts" "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/260ymv/all_you_guys_have_cute_cats_and_im_stuck_with/?ref=search_posts" ...

reddit_content - used to extract comment attributes from a Reddit thread. Use URLs extracted from reddit_urls.

Example:

reddit_thread <- reddit_content(reddit_links$URL[1])
str(reddit_thread)
'data.frame':	207 obs. of  18 variables:
 $ id              : int  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ...
 $ structure       : chr  "1" "1_1" "1_1_1" "1_1_1_1" ...
 $ post_date       : chr  "05-02-15" "05-02-15" "05-02-15" "05-02-15" ...
 $ comm_date       : chr  "05-02-15" "05-02-15" "05-02-15" "05-02-15" ...
 $ num_comments    : num  214 214 214 214 214 214 214 214 214 214 ...
 $ subreddit       : chr  "cats" "cats" "cats" "cats" ...
 $ upvote_prop     : num  0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 ...
 $ post_score      : num  5443 5443 5443 5443 5443 ...
 $ author          : chr  "mrmyhre" "mrmyhre" "mrmyhre" "mrmyhre" ...
 $ user            : chr  "DoubleDot7" "ErrantWhimsy" "[deleted]" "[deleted]" ...
 $ comment_score   : num  294 256 103 22 11 14 8 11 4 1 ...
 $ controversiality: num  0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
 $ comment         : chr  "Why does that cat have anime eyes? " "In most cats when their pupils are that big they're about to go into crazy play/kill mode. " "I found my cat soooo appealingly cute when he got these eyes, but it meant terror was nigh." "Why do they do that? All I know about is reindeer! HO HO HO! $1.25 /u/changetip" ...
 $ title           : chr  "My brother's cat is insanely cute!" "My brother's cat is insanely cute!" "My brother's cat is insanely cute!" "My brother's cat is insanely cute!" ...
 $ post_text       : chr  "" "" "" "" ...
 $ link            : chr  "http://i.imgur.com/4clqUdj.jpg" "http://i.imgur.com/4clqUdj.jpg" "http://i.imgur.com/4clqUdj.jpg" "http://i.imgur.com/4clqUdj.jpg" ...
 $ domain          : chr  "i.imgur.com" "i.imgur.com" "i.imgur.com" "i.imgur.com" ...
 $ URL             : chr  "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/2uv9q5/my_brothers_cat_is_insanely_cute/?ref=search_posts" "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/2uv9q5/my_brothers_cat_is_insanely_cute/?ref=search_posts" "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/2uv9q5/my_brothers_cat_is_insanely_cute/?ref=search_posts" "http://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/2uv9q5/my_brothers_cat_is_insanely_cute/?ref=search_posts" ...

Functions reddit_urls and reddit_content can also be chained together using get_reddit

construct_graph - used to plot Reddit structure using the structure variable from reddit_content output. Make sure that you only feed a single thread into this function.

Example:

graph_object <- construct_graph(reddit_content(reddit_thread))

Lastly, the user_network function can be used to build a user relationship network for a thread.

library(dplyr)

target_urls <- reddit_urls(search_terms="cats", subreddit="Art", cn_threshold=50) # isolate some URLs
target_df <- target_urls %>% filter(num_comments==min(target_urls$num_comments)) %$% URL %>% reddit_content # get the contents of a small thread
network_list <- target_df %>% user_network(include_author=FALSE, agg=TRUE) # extract the network
network_list$plot # explore the plot

Here is what you would get: