opendatatoronto

opendatatoronto is an R interface to the City of Toronto Open Data Portal. The goal of the package is to help read data directly into R without needing to manually download it via the portal.

For more information, please visit the package website and vignettes:

Installation

You can intall the released version of opendatatoronto from CRAN:

install.packages("opendatatoronto")

or the development version from GitHub with:

devtools::install_github("sharlagelfand/opendatatoronto", ref = "main")

Usage

In the Portal, datasets are called packages. You can see a list of available packages by using list_packages(). This will show metadata about the package, including what topics (i.e. tags) the package covers, any civic issues it addresses, a description of it, how many resources there are (and their formats), how often it is is refreshed and when it was last refreshed.

library(opendatatoronto)
packages <- list_packages(limit = 10)
packages
#> # A tibble: 10 x 11
#>    title id    topics civic_issues publisher excerpt dataset_category
#>    <chr> <chr> <chr>  <chr>        <chr>     <chr>   <chr>           
#>  1 Cata… 473d… City … <NA>         Informat… Histor… Table           
#>  2 Lobb… 6a87… City … <NA>         Lobbyist… The Lo… Document        
#>  3 Addr… abed… Locat… Mobility     Informat… This d… Document        
#>  4 Prop… 1aca… Locat… Mobility     Informat… This d… Document        
#>  5 Buil… 108c… Devel… Affordable … Toronto … Provid… Document        
#>  6 Buil… 8219… Devel… <NA>         Toronto … Provid… Document        
#>  7 Muni… 5da2… City … Affordable … Municipa… This d… Document        
#>  8 Shor… fc41… Permi… Affordable … Municipa… This d… Table           
#>  9 Poll… 7bce… City … <NA>         City Cle… Polls … Table           
#> 10 Dail… 8a6e… City … Affordable … Shelter,… Daily … Table           
#> # … with 4 more variables: num_resources <int>, formats <chr>,
#> #   refresh_rate <chr>, last_refreshed <date>

You can also search packages by title:

ttc_packages <- search_packages("ttc")

ttc_packages
#> # A tibble: 14 x 11
#>    title id    topics civic_issues publisher excerpt dataset_category
#>    <chr> <chr> <chr>  <chr>        <chr>     <chr>   <chr>           
#>  1 TTC … 7795… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "Data … Document        
#>  2 TTC … 996c… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "TTC S… Document        
#>  3 TTC … b68c… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "TTC S… Document        
#>  4 TTC … e271… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "TTC B… Document        
#>  5 TTC … ef35… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Document        
#>  6 TTC … aedd… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Website         
#>  7 TTC … 1444… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Website         
#>  8 TTC … 4b80… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Website         
#>  9 TTC … d2a7… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Website         
#> 10 TTC … d9dc… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Document        
#> 11 TTC … 2c4c… Finan… Mobility,Fi… Toronto … "This … Website         
#> 12 TTC … 4eb6… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "This … Document        
#> 13 TTC … c01c… <NA>   Mobility     Toronto … "This … Document        
#> 14 TTC … 8217… Trans… Mobility     Toronto … "The N… Document        
#> # … with 4 more variables: num_resources <int>, formats <chr>,
#> #   refresh_rate <chr>, last_refreshed <date>

Or see metadata for a specific package:

show_package("996cfe8d-fb35-40ce-b569-698d51fc683b")
#> # A tibble: 1 x 11
#>   title id    topics civic_issues publisher excerpt dataset_category
#>   <chr> <chr> <chr>  <chr>        <chr>     <chr>   <chr>           
#> 1 TTC … 996c… <NA>   <NA>         <NA>      <NA>    <NA>            
#> # … with 4 more variables: num_resources <int>, formats <chr>,
#> #   refresh_rate <chr>, last_refreshed <date>

Within a package, there are a number of resources - e.g. CSV, XSLX, JSON, SHP files, and more. Resources are the actual “data”.

For a given package, you can get a list of resources using list_package_resources(). You can pass it the package id (which is contained in marriage_license_packages below):

marriage_licence_packages <- search_packages("Marriage Licence Statistics")

marriage_licence_resources <- marriage_licence_packages %>%
  list_package_resources()

marriage_licence_resources
#> # A tibble: 1 x 4
#>   name                        id                            format last_modified
#>   <chr>                       <chr>                         <chr>  <date>       
#> 1 Marriage Licence Statistic… 4d985c1d-9c7e-4f74-9864-7321… CSV    2021-01-01

But you can also get a list of resources by using the package’s URL from the Portal:

list_package_resources("https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/sexual-health-clinic-locations-hours-and-services/")
#> # A tibble: 2 x 4
#>   name                               id                     format last_modified
#>   <chr>                              <chr>                  <chr>  <date>       
#> 1 sexual-health-clinic-locations-ho… e958dd45-9426-4298-ac… XLSX   2019-08-15   
#> 2 Sexual-health-clinic-locations-ho… 2edcc4a3-c095-4ce3-b0… XLSX   2019-08-15

Finally (and most usefully!), you can download the resource (i.e., the actual data) directly into R using get_resource():

marriage_licence_statistics <- marriage_licence_resources %>%
  get_resource()

marriage_licence_statistics
#> # A tibble: 461 x 4
#>    `_id` CIVIC_CENTRE MARRIAGE_LICENSES TIME_PERIOD
#>    <int> <chr>                    <dbl> <chr>      
#>  1  8354 ET                          80 2011-01    
#>  2  8355 NY                         136 2011-01    
#>  3  8356 SC                         159 2011-01    
#>  4  8357 TO                         367 2011-01    
#>  5  8358 ET                         109 2011-02    
#>  6  8359 NY                         150 2011-02    
#>  7  8360 SC                         154 2011-02    
#>  8  8361 TO                         383 2011-02    
#>  9  8362 ET                         177 2011-03    
#> 10  8363 NY                         231 2011-03    
#> # … with 451 more rows