How to convert searchTwitter results (from library(twitteR)) into a data.frame?

Question

I am working on saving twitter search results into a database (SQL Server) and am getting an error when I pull the search results from twitteR.

If I execute:

library(twitteR)
puppy <- as.data.frame(searchTwitter("puppy", session=getCurlHandle(),num=100))

I get an error of:

Error in as.data.frame.default(x[[i]], optional = TRUE) : 
  cannot coerce class structure("status", package = "twitteR") into a data.frame

This is important because in order to use RODBC to add this to a table using sqlSave it needs to be a data.frame. At least that's the error message I got:

Error in sqlSave(localSQLServer, puppy, tablename = "puppy_staging",  : 
  should be a data frame

So does anyone have any suggestions on how to coerce the list to a data.frame or how I can load the list through RODBC?

My final goal is to have a table that mirrors the structure of values returned by searchTwitter. Here is an example of what I am trying to retrieve and load:

library(twitteR)
puppy <- searchTwitter("puppy", session=getCurlHandle(),num=2)
str(puppy)

List of 2
 $ :Formal class 'status' [package "twitteR"] with 10 slots
  .. ..@ text        : chr "beautifull and  kc reg Beagle Mix for rehomes: This little puppy is looking for a new loving family wh... http://bit.ly/9stN7V "| __truncated__
  .. ..@ favorited   : logi FALSE
  .. ..@ replyToSN   : chr(0) 
  .. ..@ created     : chr "Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:04:03 +0000"
  .. ..@ truncated   : logi FALSE
  .. ..@ replyToSID  : num(0) 
  .. ..@ id          : num 1.63e+10
  .. ..@ replyToUID  : num(0) 
  .. ..@ statusSource: chr "&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitterfeed.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;twitterfeed&lt;/a&gt;"
  .. ..@ screenName  : chr "puppy_ads"
 $ :Formal class 'status' [package "twitteR"] with 10 slots
  .. ..@ text        : chr "the cutest puppy followed me on my walk, my grandma won't let me keep it. taking it to the pound sadface"
  .. ..@ favorited   : logi FALSE
  .. ..@ replyToSN   : chr(0) 
  .. ..@ created     : chr "Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:04:01 +0000"
  .. ..@ truncated   : logi FALSE
  .. ..@ replyToSID  : num(0) 
  .. ..@ id          : num 1.63e+10
  .. ..@ replyToUID  : num(0) 
  .. ..@ statusSource: chr "&lt;a href=&quot;http://blackberry.com/twitter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Twitter for BlackBerry®&lt;/a&gt;"
  .. ..@ screenName  : chr "iamsweaters"

So I think the data.frame of puppy should have column names like:

- text
- favorited
- replytoSN
- created
- truncated
- replytoSID
- id
- replytoUID
- statusSource
- screenName

Answer 1

I use this code I found from http://blog.ouseful.info/2011/11/09/getting-started-with-twitter-analysis-in-r/ a while ago:

#get data
tws<-searchTwitter('#keyword',n=10)

#make data frame
df <- do.call("rbind", lapply(tws, as.data.frame))

#write to csv file (or your RODBC code)
write.csv(df,file="twitterList.csv")