That does return a dataframe, although it 's kind of a mangled gemisch of list and dataframe. If you use a different package, it is just a list. Using str(df) (warning ...long output)
library(RJSONIO)
str(df)
#------------
List of 1
$ data:List of 2
..$ refreshInterval: num 0
..$ game :List of 7
.. ..$ awayteamid : num 24
.. ..$ awayteamname: chr "Anaheim Ducks"
.. ..$ hometeamname: chr "Washington Capitals"
.. ..$ plays :List of 1
.. .. ..$ play:List of 102
.. .. .. ..$ :List of 28
-----------Output truncated----------------
.... shows that the plays portions can be obtained with:
plays_out <- df$data$game$plays
I do not see that there is any advantage in trying to parse this yourself. Most of the "volume" of data is in the plays component.
When I use jsonlite::fromJSON I get a slightly different structure which is sufficiently different that I now I need to use a different call to get the plays items:
> str(df )
'data.frame': 1 obs. of 2 variables:
$ refreshInterval:List of 1
..$ data: num 0
$ game :'data.frame': 1 obs. of 7 variables:
..$ awayteamid :List of 1
.. ..$ data: num 24
..$ awayteamname:List of 1
.. ..$ data: chr "Anaheim Ducks"
..$ hometeamname:List of 1
.. ..$ data: chr "Washington Capitals"
..$ plays :'data.frame': 1 obs. of 1 variable:
.. ..$ play:List of 1
.. .. ..$ data:'data.frame': 102 obs. of 29 variables:
.. .. .. ..$ aoi :List of 102
.. .. .. .. ..$ : num 8470612 8470621 8473933 8473972 8475151 ...
.. .. .. .. ..$ : num 8459442 8467332 8467400 8471476 8471699 ...
.. .. .. .. ..$ : num 8459442 8467332 8467400 8471476 8471699 ...
.. .. .. .. ..$ : num 8459442 8467332 8467400 8471476 8471699 ...
#------snipped output------------
> length(df$game$plays)
[1] 1
> length(df$game$plays$play)
[1] 1
> length(df$game$plays$play$data)
[1] 29
I think I prefer the result from RJSONIO::fromJSON, since it doesn't add the complexity of dataframe coercion.
