Scraping from aspx website using R

Question

I am trying to accomplish a task using R to scrape data on a website.

1. I would like to go through each link on the following page: http://capitol.hawaii.gov/advreports/advreport.aspx?year=2013&report=deadline&rpt_type=&measuretype=hb&title=House Bills

2. Select only items with Current Status showing "transmitted to the governor". For example, http://capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=17&year=2013

3. And then scrapping the cells within STATUS TEXT for the following clause" Passed Final Reading". For example: Passed Final Reading as amended in SD 2 with Representative(s) Fale, Jordan, Tsuji voting aye with reservations; Representative(s) Cabanilla, Morikawa, Oshiro, Tokioka voting no (4) and none excused (0).

I have tried using previous examples with packages Rcurl and XML (in R), but I don't know how to use them correctly for aspx sites. So what I would love to have is: 1. Some suggestion on how to build such a code. 2. And recommendation for how to learn the knowledge needed for performing such a task.

Thanks for any help,

Tom

Answer 1

require(httr)
require(XML)

basePage <- "http://capitol.hawaii.gov"

h <- handle(basePage)

GET(handle = h)

res <- GET(handle = h, path = "/advreports/advreport.aspx?year=2013&report=deadline&rpt_type=&measuretype=hb&title=House")

# parse content for "Transmitted to Governor" text
resXML <- htmlParse(content(res, as = "text"))
resTable <- getNodeSet(resXML, '//*/table[@id ="GridViewReports"]/tr/td[3]')
appRows <-sapply(resTable, xmlValue)
include <- grepl("Transmitted to Governor", appRows)
resUrls <- xpathSApply(resXML, '//*/table[@id ="GridViewReports"]/tr/td[2]//@href')

appUrls <- resUrls[include]

# look at just the first

res <- GET(handle = h, path = appUrls[1])

resXML <- htmlParse(content(res, as = "text"))


xpathSApply(resXML, '//*[text()[contains(.,"Passed Final Reading")]]', xmlValue)

[1] "Passed Final Reading as amended in SD 2 with Representative(s) Fale, Jordan,
 Tsuji voting aye with reservations; Representative(s) Cabanilla, Morikawa, Oshiro,
 Tokioka voting no (4) and none excused (0)."

Let package httr handle all the background work by setting up a handle.

If you want to run over all 92 links:

 # get all the links returned as a list (will take sometime)
 # print statement included for sanity
 res <- lapply(appUrls, function(x){print(sprintf("Got url no. %d",which(appUrls%in%x)));
                                   GET(handle = h, path = x)})
 resXML <- lapply(res, function(x){htmlParse(content(x, as = "text"))})
 appString <- sapply(resXML, function(x){
                   xpathSApply(x, '//*[text()[contains(.,"Passed Final Reading")]]', xmlValue)
                      })


 head(appString)

>  head(appString)
$href
[1] "Passed Final Reading as amended in SD 2 with Representative(s) Fale, Jordan, Tsuji voting aye with reservations; Representative(s) Cabanilla, Morikawa, Oshiro, Tokioka voting no (4) and none excused (0)."

$href
[1] "Passed Final Reading, as amended (CD 1). 25 Aye(s); Aye(s) with reservations: none . 0 No(es): none.  0 Excused: none."                                                  
[2] "Passed Final Reading as amended in CD 1 with Representative(s) Cullen, Har voting aye with reservations; Representative(s) McDermott voting no (1) and none excused (0)."

$href
[1] "Passed Final Reading, as amended (CD 1). 25 Aye(s); Aye(s) with reservations: none . 0 No(es): none.  0 Excused: none."                                 
[2] "Passed Final Reading as amended in CD 1 with none voting aye with reservations; Representative(s) Hashem, McDermott voting no (2) and none excused (0)."

$href
[1] "Passed Final Reading, as amended (CD 1). 24 Aye(s); Aye(s) with reservations: none . 0 No(es): none.  1 Excused: Ige."                    
[2] "Passed Final Reading as amended in CD 1 with none voting aye with reservations; none voting no (0) and Representative(s) Say excused (1)."

$href
[1] "Passed Final Reading, as amended (CD 1). 25 Aye(s); Aye(s) with reservations: none . 0 No(es): none.  0 Excused: none."                        
[2] "Passed Final Reading as amended in CD 1 with Representative(s) Johanson voting aye with reservations; none voting no (0) and none excused (0)."

$href
[1] "Passed Final Reading, as amended (CD 1). 25 Aye(s); Aye(s) with reservations: none . 0 No(es): none.  0 Excused: none."  
[2] "Passed Final Reading as amended in CD 1 with none voting aye with reservations; none voting no (0) and none excused (0)."