nhlscrapr (version 1.5.1)

full.game.database: Create a shell database for NHL games from 2002 to the present, then download them

Description

Creates a shell database for NHL games from 2002 to present, unfilled with game information. Uses this to collect and scrape NHL data, but not process them immediately.

Usage

full.game.database(extra.seasons=0)
  download.single.game (season="20122013",
                        gcode="20001",
                        rdata.folder="nhlr-data",
                        verbose=TRUE)
  download.games       (games=full.game.database(),
                        rdata.folder="nhlr-data")

Arguments

extra.seasons

Beyond 20132014, adds data for additional seasons (assuming nhlscrapr is not supported and updated before the season begins.

season

A character string for the two years specifying an NHL season.

gcode

The five-digit ID number for a particular NHL game.

rdata.folder

The location within the current directory to which to save the downloaded files. Will be created if it does not exist.

verbose

Report additional messages.

games

A game database, such as the one produced by full.game.database().

Value

• full.game.database: a data frame with columns including season, session (Regular or Playoffs), game number/gcode (which game in the season?). Placeholders for teams, score and date of game are included to be filled in later. ``valid'' indicates whether a full record of the game is available for download.

  download.single.game: returns a single Boolean value indicating if no errors were recorded during the download. Saves the game to disk, particularly the PL, ES, SCH and SCV files, along with JSON data for x-y events.

  download.games: returns the input game database with ``valid'' changed to FALSE for any failed downloads.

Details

full.game.database() gives ID numbers for all regular-season and playoff games played between 2002 and 2013, with indicators for whether any particular game is known to be unavailable.

download.single.game() retrieves the relevant files for a single game from NHL.com.

download.games() retrieves the files for all games in the table.

Examples

#Select a part of the history.
  game.table <- full.game.database()[201:220,]

  #Download one game.
  download.single.game(game.table$season[1], game.table$gcode[1])

  #Download all games.

game.table.updated <- download.games (games=game.table)