Course

Introduction to APIs in R

In this course, you’ll expand your R programming skills by learning how to acquire data from APIs using R.

Enroll for free

Part of the Data Analyst (R), and APIs and Web Scraping with R paths.

4.8 (359 reviews)

2,118 learners enrolled in this course.

Intermediate friendly
3 hours
Self paced
4 lessons
1 project

“Getting a data science job would have been much harder without Dataquest. It’s a great product. I recommend it to anyone who asks me about how to get started.”

Adam Zabrodski

Data Science Manager @ Later

Introduction to APIs in R

Enroll For Free

Course overview

Although there are many datasets available in convenient formats like CSVs, there is also a large amount of data that is accessible only via an API. If you want to analyze streaming data from Twitter, for example, or dig into posting trends on Reddit, you need to get that data from the relevant APIs.

In this course, you’ll learn the fundamentals of APIs, such as connecting to an open API and interpreting different status codes. You’ll also learn how to work with the JSON data format in R (since most data from APIs will be in JSON format). Then, you’ll tackle more complex tasks like authenticating with private APIs and submitting more complex requests.

Best of all, you’ll learn by doing — you’ll practice and get feedback directly in the browser. The course concludes with a guided project that asks you to assemble a full data analysis project using an API to get data on New York’s solar energy resources.

Key skills

Querying external data sources using an API
Querying using an API with authentication
Interpreting various API status codes

Course outline

Introduction to APIs in R [4 lessons]

Working with APIs in R 1h

Lesson Objectives

Identify the advantages of working with APIs
Process API requests
Define the JSON data format

Intermediate APIs in R 1h

Lesson Objectives

Authenticate with APIs
Identify the different types of API requests

Challenge: Working with Different APIs in R 1h

Lesson Objectives

Employ different APIs
Employ different APIs requests types

Guided Project: New York Solar Resource Data 1h

Lesson Objectives

Expand your portfolio with a guided API project
Overcome common setbacks in data analysis

Projects in this course

New York Solar Resource Data

For this project, we’ll step into the role of data analysts to extract solar resource data for New York City using an API, parse the JSON response, and convert it into a dataframe for analysis in R.

View Project

The Dataquest guarantee

Dataquest has helped thousands of people start new careers in data. If you put in the work and follow our path, you’ll master data skills and grow your career.

We believe so strongly in our paths that we offer a full satisfaction guarantee. If you complete a career path on Dataquest and aren’t satisfied with your outcome, we’ll give you a refund.

Master skills faster with Dataquest

Go from zero to job-ready

Learn exactly what you need to achieve your goal. Don’t waste time on unrelated lessons.

Build your project portfolio

Build confidence with our in-depth projects, and show off your data skills.

Challenge yourself with exercises

Work with real data from day one with interactive lessons and hands-on exercises.

Showcase your path certification

Share the evidence of your hard work with your network and potential employers.

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Aaron Melton

Business Analyst at Aditi Consulting

“Dataquest starts at the most basic level, so a beginner can understand the concepts. I tried learning to code before, using Codecademy and Coursera. I struggled because I had no background in coding, and I was spending a lot of time Googling. Dataquest helped me actually learn.”

Jessica Ko

Machine Learning Engineer at Twitter

“I liked the interactive environment on Dataquest. The material was clear and well organized. I spent more time practicing then watching videos and it made me want to keep learning.”

Victoria E. Guzik

Associate Data Scientist at Callisto Media

“I really love learning on Dataquest. I looked into a couple of other options and I found that they were much too handhold-y and fill in the blank relative to Dataquest’s method. The projects on Dataquest were key to getting my job. I doubled my income!”