Mon, Dec 11, 2017

Data Rectangling with jq

“Data rectangling”: the process of turning highly nested data structures (e.g. JSON, XML) into a tabular format. Data rectangling is a brilliant turn of phrase coined by Jenny Bryan (UBC, RStudio) and leader in the #rstats community. Recording or slides of Jenny’s talk on the subject give a much better intro to the idea and working with this in R, particularly through the purrr package. As nice as purrr is for the task, I’ve recently found that the jqr package from Scott Chamberlain and co can be a much easier way to go about rectangling your JSON.