Tidyverse Create

Overview

In this assignment, you’ll practice collaborating around a code project with GitHub. Each student will select a website API from the list of public APIs curated on this github repository. I recommend choosing a well documented repository which allows you to access data that you can load into R and visualize. If you know of a website with an API that isn’t listed here, you may use it but be aware that this list is curated so there is a better chance that it will be easy to learn how to use the APIs on the websites listed here. I recommend choosing an API that doesn’t require authentication. If authentication is required, make sure not to share you credentials.

Using your selected API, you will create a vignette (in the form of a qmd file) using the httr2 library: https://httr2.r-lib.org/. This vignette should include three sections:

  1. A description of the API that you selected and the data it contains, along with a question that you are interested in exploring using the API
  2. Code that uses httr2 and other tidyverse functions which downloads the data you are interested in from the website and performs a simple visualization or analysis to address your question. Make sure to describe how your code works with the API.
  3. A conclusion section where you discuss the meaning of your visualization and/or analysis.

You should incorporate your vignette into a shared github repository which will contain all of the examples. I have created the following repository for you to use for this assignment:

https://github.com/georgehagstrom/Fall2025TIDYVERSE

You should clone the provided repository. In order to push code to the repository, you will need to be added as a collaborator, which requires you to send me your github username (preferably over slack). You should also update the README.md file with your example. You may want to review Section 25 of Happy git and github for the useR. The github repo I have setup is to be organized following the first “ours” model.

After you’ve created your vignette and uploaded it to github, render your pdf file and submit it along with your github handle to brightspace.

In several weeks, there will be a followup assignment where we will re-use the work submitted for this assignment and where you will select a vignette uploaded by one of your classmates and extend it by adding additional analyses.

If you have not yet done so, you will need to create a github account. There are many ways to work with git and R together, but one way I recommend is to follow the tutorial in the book Happy git and gitHub for the useR. To interface with our github repository use section 15.2 and create a project from an existing github repository.