Using RGoogleAnalytics to retrieve data from google

Question

I'm using RGoogleAnalytics to retrieve mutiple dimensions data ,but every time I try to run ga.data <- ga$GetReportData(query) then I got an error message :Error in fromJSON(api.response.json, method = "C") : unexpected escaped character '\'' at pos 53 It's ok when I try other functions How could I fix this？ I use the following code：

require("RGoogleAnalytics")

query <- QueryBuilder()
access_token <- query$authorize()                                                

ga <- RGoogleAnalytics()

ga.profiles <- ga$GetProfileData(access_token)

profile <- ga.profiles$id[3] 
startdate <- "2013-10-01"
enddate <- "2013-12-31"
dimension <- "ga:date,ga:source,ga:medium,ga:keyword,ga:city,ga:operatingSystem,ga:landingPagePath"
metric <- "ga:visits,ga:goal1Completions,ga:goal3Completions"
sort <- "ga:visits"
maxresults <- 500000

query$Init(start.date = startdate,
           end.date = enddate,
           dimensions = dimension,
           metrics = metric,
           max.results = maxresults,
           table.id = paste("ga:",profile,sep="",collapse=","),
           access_token=access_token)

ga.data <- ga$GetReportData(query)

Answer 1

I had some trouble with this too,figured out a way.

Step 1: Install Packages

# lubridate
       install.packages("lubridate")
# httr 
       install.packages("httr")
#RGoogleAnalytics

Use this link to download this particular version of RGoogleAnalytics http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RGoogleAnalytics/index.html

Step 2: Create Client ID and Secret ID

1. Navigate to Google Developers Console. (https://console.developers.google.com/project)
2. Create a New Project and Open it.
3. Navigate to APIs and ensure that the Analytics API is turned On for your project.
4. Navigate to Credentials and create a New Client ID.
5. Select Application Type – Installed Application.

6. Once your Client ID and Client Secret are created, copy them to your R Script.

   client.id <- "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
   client.secret <- "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
   token <- Auth(client.id,client.secret)
   

   Save the token object for future sessions

   save(token,file="./token_file")
   

In future sessions, you need not generate the Access Token every time. Assumming that you have saved it to a file, it can be loaded via the following snippet -

load("./token_file")

Validate and refresh the token

ValidateToken(token)

Step 3: Build required query

query.list <- Init( start.date = "2014-08-01",
                    end.date = "2014-09-01",
                    dimensions = "ga:sourceMedium",
                    metrics = "ga:sessions,ga:transactions",
                    max.results = 10000,
                    sort = "-ga:transactions",
                    table.id = "ga:0000000")

Create the Query Builder object so that the query parameters are validated

ga.query <- QueryBuilder(query.list)

Extract the data and store it in a data-frame

ga.data <- GetReportData(ga.query, token,paginate_query = FALSE)

Handy Links

Common Errors: developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/coreErrors#standard_errors

Query Explorer: ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/query-explorer/?csw=1

Dimensions and metrics: developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets