Dear R experts, I'm reading data from an online database via API and it gets delivered in this messy comma separated structure,
> RAW.API <- > structure("id,event_arm,name,dob,pushed_text,pushed_calc,complete\n\"01\",\"event_1_arm_1\",\"John\",\"1979-05-01\",\"\",\"\",2\n\"01\",\"event_2_arm_1\",\"John\",\"2012-09-02\",\"abc\",\"123\",1\n\"01\",\"event_3_arm_1\",\"John\",\"2012-09-10\",\"\",\"\",2\n\"02\",\"event_1_arm_1\",\"Mary\",\"1951-09-10\",\"def\",\"456\",2\n\"02\",\"event_2_arm_1\",\"Mary\",\"1978-09-12\",\"\",\"\",2\n", > "`Content-Type`" = structure(c("text/html", "utf-8"), .Names = c("", > "charset"))) I have this script that nicely parses it into a data frame, > (df <- read.table(file = textConnection(RAW.API), header = TRUE, sep = ",", na.strings = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)) > id event_arm name dob pushed_text pushed_calc complete > 1 1 event_1_arm_1 John 1979-05-01 <NA> NA 2 > 2 1 event_2_arm_1 John 2012-09-02 abc 123 1 > 3 1 event_3_arm_1 John 2012-09-10 <NA> NA 2 > 4 2 event_1_arm_1 Mary 1951-09-10 def 456 2 > 5 2 event_2_arm_1 Mary 1978-09-12 <NA> NA 2 I then do some calculations and write them to pushed_text and pushed_calc whereafter I need to format the data back to the messy comma separated structure it came in. I imagine something like this, > API.back <- `some magic command`(df, ...) > identical(RAW.API, API.back) > [1] TRUE Some command that can format my data from the data frame I made, df, back to the structure that the raw API-object came in, RAW.API. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks for reading. Eric ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.