Rectangling

Introduction

Rectangling is the art and craft of taking a deeply nested list (often sourced from wild caught JSON or XML) and taming it into a tidy data set of rows and columns. There are three functions from tidyr that are particularly useful for rectangling:

unnest_longer() takes each element of a list-column and makes a new row.
unnest_wider() takes each element of a list-column and makes a new column.
unnest_auto() guesses whether you want unnest_longer() or unnest_wider().
hoist() is similar to unnest_wider() but only plucks out selected components, and can reach down multiple levels.

A very large number of data rectangling problems can be solved by combining these functions with a splash of dplyr (largely eliminating prior approaches that combined mutate() with multiple purrr::map()s).

To illustrate these techniques, we’ll use the repurrrsive package, which provides a number deeply nested lists originally mostly captured from web APIs.

library(tidyr)
library(dplyr)
library(repurrrsive)

GitHub users

We’ll start with gh_users, a list which contains information about six GitHub users. To begin, we put the gh_users list into a data frame:

users <- tibble(user = gh_users)

This seems a bit counter-intuitive: why is the first step in making a list simpler to make it more complicated? But a data frame has a big advantage: it bundles together multiple vectors so that everything is tracked together in a single object.

Each user is a named list, where each element represents a column.

names(users$user[[1]])
#>  [1] "login"               "id"                  "avatar_url"         
#>  [4] "gravatar_id"         "url"                 "html_url"           
#>  [7] "followers_url"       "following_url"       "gists_url"          
#> [10] "starred_url"         "subscriptions_url"   "organizations_url"  
#> [13] "repos_url"           "events_url"          "received_events_url"
#> [16] "type"                "site_admin"          "name"               
#> [19] "company"             "blog"                "location"           
#> [22] "email"               "hireable"            "bio"                
#> [25] "public_repos"        "public_gists"        "followers"          
#> [28] "following"           "created_at"          "updated_at"

There are two ways to turn the list components into columns. unnest_wider() takes every component and makes a new column:

users %>% unnest_wider(user)
#> # A tibble: 6 x 30
#>   login     id avatar_url gravatar_id url   html_url followers_url
#>   <chr>  <int> <chr>      <chr>       <chr> <chr>    <chr>        
#> 1 gabo… 6.60e5 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> 2 jenn… 5.99e5 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> 3 jtle… 1.57e6 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> 4 juli… 1.25e7 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> 5 leep… 3.51e6 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> 6 masa… 8.36e6 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> # … with 23 more variables: following_url <chr>, gists_url <chr>,
#> #   starred_url <chr>, subscriptions_url <chr>, organizations_url <chr>,
#> #   repos_url <chr>, events_url <chr>, received_events_url <chr>,
#> #   type <chr>, site_admin <lgl>, name <chr>, company <chr>, blog <chr>,
#> #   location <chr>, email <chr>, public_repos <int>, public_gists <int>,
#> #   followers <int>, following <int>, created_at <chr>, updated_at <chr>,
#> #   bio <chr>, hireable <lgl>

But in this case, there are many components and we don’t need most of them so we can instead use hoist(). hoist() allows us to pull out selected components using the same syntax as purrr::pluck():

users %>% hoist(user, 
  followers = "followers", 
  login = "login", 
  url = "html_url"
)
#> # A tibble: 6 x 4
#>   followers login       url                            user             
#>       <int> <chr>       <chr>                          <list>           
#> 1       303 gaborcsardi https://github.com/gaborcsardi <named list [27]>
#> 2       780 jennybc     https://github.com/jennybc     <named list [27]>
#> 3      3958 jtleek      https://github.com/jtleek      <named list [27]>
#> 4       115 juliasilge  https://github.com/juliasilge  <named list [27]>
#> 5       213 leeper      https://github.com/leeper      <named list [27]>
#> 6        34 masalmon    https://github.com/masalmon    <named list [27]>

hoist() removes the named components from the user list-column, so you can think of it as moving components out of the inner list into the top-level data frame.

Github repos

We start off gh_repos similarly, by putting it in a tibble:

repos <- tibble(repo = gh_repos)
repos
#> # A tibble: 6 x 1
#>   repo       
#>   <list>     
#> 1 <list [30]>
#> 2 <list [30]>
#> 3 <list [30]>
#> 4 <list [26]>
#> 5 <list [30]>
#> 6 <list [30]>

This time the elements of user are a list of repositories that belong to that user. These are observations, so should become new rows, so we use unnest_longer() rather than unnest_wider():

repos <- repos %>% unnest_longer(repo)
repos
#> # A tibble: 176 x 1
#>    repo             
#>    <list>           
#>  1 <named list [68]>
#>  2 <named list [68]>
#>  3 <named list [68]>
#>  4 <named list [68]>
#>  5 <named list [68]>
#>  6 <named list [68]>
#>  7 <named list [68]>
#>  8 <named list [68]>
#>  9 <named list [68]>
#> 10 <named list [68]>
#> # … with 166 more rows

Then we can use unnest_wider() or hoist():

repos %>% hoist(repo, 
  login = c("owner", "login"), 
  name = "name",
  homepage = "homepage",
  watchers = "watchers_count"
)
#> # A tibble: 176 x 5
#>    login       name        homepage watchers repo             
#>    <chr>       <chr>       <chr>       <int> <list>           
#>  1 gaborcsardi after       <NA>            5 <named list [65]>
#>  2 gaborcsardi argufy      <NA>           19 <named list [65]>
#>  3 gaborcsardi ask         <NA>            5 <named list [65]>
#>  4 gaborcsardi baseimports <NA>            0 <named list [65]>
#>  5 gaborcsardi citest      <NA>            0 <named list [65]>
#>  6 gaborcsardi clisymbols  ""             18 <named list [65]>
#>  7 gaborcsardi cmaker      <NA>            0 <named list [65]>
#>  8 gaborcsardi cmark       <NA>            0 <named list [65]>
#>  9 gaborcsardi conditions  <NA>            0 <named list [65]>
#> 10 gaborcsardi crayon      <NA>           52 <named list [65]>
#> # … with 166 more rows

Note the use of c("owner", "login"): this allows us to reach two levels deep inside of a list. An alternative approach would be to pull out just owner and then put each element of it in a column:

repos %>% 
  hoist(repo, owner = "owner") %>% 
  unnest_wider(owner)
#> # A tibble: 176 x 18
#>    login     id avatar_url gravatar_id url   html_url followers_url
#>    <chr>  <int> <chr>      <chr>       <chr> <chr>    <chr>        
#>  1 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  2 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  3 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  4 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  5 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  6 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  7 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  8 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#>  9 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> 10 gabo… 660288 https://a… ""          http… https:/… https://api.…
#> # … with 166 more rows, and 11 more variables: following_url <chr>,
#> #   gists_url <chr>, starred_url <chr>, subscriptions_url <chr>,
#> #   organizations_url <chr>, repos_url <chr>, events_url <chr>,
#> #   received_events_url <chr>, type <chr>, site_admin <lgl>, repo <list>

Instead of looking at the list and carefully thinking about whether it needs to become rows or columns, you can use unnest_auto(). It uses a handful of heuristics to figure out whether unnest_longer() or unnest_wider() is appropriate, and tells you about its reasoning.

tibble(repo = gh_repos) %>% 
  unnest_auto(repo) %>% 
  unnest_auto(repo)
#> Using `unnest_longer(repo)`; no element has names
#> Using `unnest_wider(repo)`; elements have 68 names in common
#> # A tibble: 176 x 67
#>        id name  full_name owner private html_url description fork  url  
#>     <int> <chr> <chr>     <lis> <lgl>   <chr>    <chr>       <lgl> <chr>
#>  1 6.12e7 after gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… Run Code i… FALSE http…
#>  2 4.05e7 argu… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… Declarativ… FALSE http…
#>  3 3.64e7 ask   gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… Friendly C… FALSE http…
#>  4 3.49e7 base… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… Do we get … FALSE http…
#>  5 6.16e7 cite… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… Test R pac… TRUE  http…
#>  6 3.39e7 clis… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… Unicode sy… FALSE http…
#>  7 3.72e7 cmak… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… port of cm… TRUE  http…
#>  8 6.80e7 cmark gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… CommonMark… TRUE  http…
#>  9 6.32e7 cond… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… <NA>        TRUE  http…
#> 10 2.43e7 cray… gaborcsa… <nam… FALSE   https:/… R package … FALSE http…
#> # … with 166 more rows, and 58 more variables: forks_url <chr>,
#> #   keys_url <chr>, collaborators_url <chr>, teams_url <chr>,
#> #   hooks_url <chr>, issue_events_url <chr>, events_url <chr>,
#> #   assignees_url <chr>, branches_url <chr>, tags_url <chr>,
#> #   blobs_url <chr>, git_tags_url <chr>, git_refs_url <chr>,
#> #   trees_url <chr>, statuses_url <chr>, languages_url <chr>,
#> #   stargazers_url <chr>, contributors_url <chr>, subscribers_url <chr>,
#> #   subscription_url <chr>, commits_url <chr>, git_commits_url <chr>,
#> #   comments_url <chr>, issue_comment_url <chr>, contents_url <chr>,
#> #   compare_url <chr>, merges_url <chr>, archive_url <chr>,
#> #   downloads_url <chr>, issues_url <chr>, pulls_url <chr>,
#> #   milestones_url <chr>, notifications_url <chr>, labels_url <chr>,
#> #   releases_url <chr>, deployments_url <chr>, created_at <chr>,
#> #   updated_at <chr>, pushed_at <chr>, git_url <chr>, ssh_url <chr>,
#> #   clone_url <chr>, svn_url <chr>, size <int>, stargazers_count <int>,
#> #   watchers_count <int>, language <chr>, has_issues <lgl>,
#> #   has_downloads <lgl>, has_wiki <lgl>, has_pages <lgl>,
#> #   forks_count <int>, open_issues_count <int>, forks <int>,
#> #   open_issues <int>, watchers <int>, default_branch <chr>,
#> #   homepage <chr>

Game of Thrones characters

got_chars has a similar structure to gh_users: it’s a list of named lists, where each element of the inner list describes some attribute of a GoT character. We start in the same way, first by creating a data frame and then by unnesting each component into a column:

chars <- tibble(char = got_chars)
chars
#> # A tibble: 30 x 1
#>    char             
#>    <list>           
#>  1 <named list [18]>
#>  2 <named list [18]>
#>  3 <named list [18]>
#>  4 <named list [18]>
#>  5 <named list [18]>
#>  6 <named list [18]>
#>  7 <named list [18]>
#>  8 <named list [18]>
#>  9 <named list [18]>
#> 10 <named list [18]>
#> # … with 20 more rows

chars2 <- chars %>% unnest_wider(char)
chars2
#> # A tibble: 30 x 18
#>    url      id name  gender culture born  died  alive titles aliases father
#>    <chr> <int> <chr> <chr>  <chr>   <chr> <chr> <lgl> <list> <list>  <chr> 
#>  1 http…  1022 Theo… Male   Ironbo… In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  2 http…  1052 Tyri… Male   ""      In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  3 http…  1074 Vict… Male   Ironbo… In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  4 http…  1109 Will  Male   ""      ""    In 2… FALSE <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  5 http…  1166 Areo… Male   Norvos… In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  6 http…  1267 Chett Male   ""      At H… In 2… FALSE <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  7 http…  1295 Cres… Male   ""      In 2… In 2… FALSE <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  8 http…   130 Aria… Female Dornish In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#>  9 http…  1303 Daen… Female Valyri… In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#> 10 http…  1319 Davo… Male   Wester… In 2… ""    TRUE  <chr … <chr [… ""    
#> # … with 20 more rows, and 7 more variables: mother <chr>, spouse <chr>,
#> #   allegiances <list>, books <list>, povBooks <list>, tvSeries <list>,
#> #   playedBy <list>

This is more complex than gh_users because some component of char are themselves a list, giving us a collection of list-columns:

chars2 %>% select_if(is.list)
#> # A tibble: 30 x 7
#>    titles    aliases    allegiances books     povBooks  tvSeries  playedBy 
#>    <list>    <list>     <list>      <list>    <list>    <list>    <list>   
#>  1 <chr [3]> <chr [4]>  <chr [1]>   <chr [3]> <chr [2]> <chr [6]> <chr [1]>
#>  2 <chr [2]> <chr [11]> <chr [1]>   <chr [2]> <chr [4]> <chr [6]> <chr [1]>
#>  3 <chr [2]> <chr [1]>  <chr [1]>   <chr [3]> <chr [2]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]>
#>  4 <chr [1]> <chr [1]>  <???>       <chr [1]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]>
#>  5 <chr [1]> <chr [1]>  <chr [1]>   <chr [3]> <chr [2]> <chr [2]> <chr [1]>
#>  6 <chr [1]> <chr [1]>  <???>       <chr [2]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]>
#>  7 <chr [1]> <chr [1]>  <???>       <chr [2]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]>
#>  8 <chr [1]> <chr [1]>  <chr [1]>   <chr [4]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]> <chr [1]>
#>  9 <chr [5]> <chr [11]> <chr [1]>   <chr [1]> <chr [4]> <chr [6]> <chr [1]>
#> 10 <chr [4]> <chr [5]>  <chr [2]>   <chr [1]> <chr [3]> <chr [5]> <chr [1]>
#> # … with 20 more rows

What you do next will depend on the purposes of the analysis. Maybe you want a row for every book and TV series that the character appears in:

chars2 %>% 
  select(name, books, tvSeries) %>% 
  pivot_longer(c(books, tvSeries), names_to = "media", values_to = "value") %>% 
  unnest_longer(value)
#> # A tibble: 180 x 3
#>    name             media    value            
#>    <chr>            <chr>    <chr>            
#>  1 Theon Greyjoy    books    A Game of Thrones
#>  2 Theon Greyjoy    books    A Storm of Swords
#>  3 Theon Greyjoy    books    A Feast for Crows
#>  4 Theon Greyjoy    tvSeries Season 1         
#>  5 Theon Greyjoy    tvSeries Season 2         
#>  6 Theon Greyjoy    tvSeries Season 3         
#>  7 Theon Greyjoy    tvSeries Season 4         
#>  8 Theon Greyjoy    tvSeries Season 5         
#>  9 Theon Greyjoy    tvSeries Season 6         
#> 10 Tyrion Lannister books    A Feast for Crows
#> # … with 170 more rows

Or maybe you want to build a table that lets you match title to name:

chars2 %>% 
  select(name, title = titles) %>% 
  unnest_longer(title)
#> # A tibble: 60 x 2
#>    name              title                                               
#>    <chr>             <chr>                                               
#>  1 Theon Greyjoy     Prince of Winterfell                                
#>  2 Theon Greyjoy     Captain of Sea Bitch                                
#>  3 Theon Greyjoy     Lord of the Iron Islands (by law of the green lands)
#>  4 Tyrion Lannister  Acting Hand of the King (former)                    
#>  5 Tyrion Lannister  Master of Coin (former)                             
#>  6 Victarion Greyjoy Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet                      
#>  7 Victarion Greyjoy Master of the Iron Victory                          
#>  8 Will              ""                                                  
#>  9 Areo Hotah        Captain of the Guard at Sunspear                    
#> 10 Chett             ""                                                  
#> # … with 50 more rows

(Note that the empty titles ("") are due to an infelicity in the input got_chars: ideally people without titles would have a title vector of length 0, not a title vector of length 1 containing an empty string.)

Again, we could rewrite using unnest_auto(). This is convenient for exploration, but I wouldn’t rely on it in the long term - unnest_auto() has the undesirable property that it will always succeed. That means if your data structure changes, unnest_auto() will continue to work, but might give very different output that causes cryptic failures from downstream functions.

tibble(char = got_chars) %>% 
  unnest_auto(char) %>% 
  select(name, title = titles) %>% 
  unnest_auto(title)
#> Using `unnest_wider(char)`; elements have 18 names in common
#> Using `unnest_longer(title)`; no element has names
#> # A tibble: 60 x 2
#>    name              title                                               
#>    <chr>             <chr>                                               
#>  1 Theon Greyjoy     Prince of Winterfell                                
#>  2 Theon Greyjoy     Captain of Sea Bitch                                
#>  3 Theon Greyjoy     Lord of the Iron Islands (by law of the green lands)
#>  4 Tyrion Lannister  Acting Hand of the King (former)                    
#>  5 Tyrion Lannister  Master of Coin (former)                             
#>  6 Victarion Greyjoy Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet                      
#>  7 Victarion Greyjoy Master of the Iron Victory                          
#>  8 Will              ""                                                  
#>  9 Areo Hotah        Captain of the Guard at Sunspear                    
#> 10 Chett             ""                                                  
#> # … with 50 more rows

Geocoding with google

Next we’ll tackle a more complex form of data that comes from Google’s geocoding service. It’s against the terms of service to cache this data, so I first write a very simple wrapper around the API. This relies on having an Google maps API key stored in an environment; if that’s not available these code chunks won’t be run.

has_key <- !identical(Sys.getenv("GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY"), "")
if (!has_key) {
  message("No Google Maps API key found; code chunks will not be run")
}

# https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding
geocode <- function(address, api_key = Sys.getenv("GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY")) {
  url <- "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json"
  url <- paste0(url, "?address=", URLencode(address), "&key=", api_key)

  jsonlite::read_json(url)
}

The list that this function returns is quite complex:

houston <- geocode("Houston TX")
str(houston)
#> List of 2
#>  $ results:List of 1
#>   ..$ :List of 5
#>   .. ..$ address_components:List of 4
#>   .. .. ..$ :List of 3
#>   .. .. .. ..$ long_name : chr "Houston"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ short_name: chr "Houston"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ types     :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "locality"
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "political"
#>   .. .. ..$ :List of 3
#>   .. .. .. ..$ long_name : chr "Harris County"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ short_name: chr "Harris County"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ types     :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "administrative_area_level_2"
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "political"
#>   .. .. ..$ :List of 3
#>   .. .. .. ..$ long_name : chr "Texas"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ short_name: chr "TX"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ types     :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "administrative_area_level_1"
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "political"
#>   .. .. ..$ :List of 3
#>   .. .. .. ..$ long_name : chr "United States"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ short_name: chr "US"
#>   .. .. .. ..$ types     :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "country"
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ : chr "political"
#>   .. ..$ formatted_address : chr "Houston, TX, USA"
#>   .. ..$ geometry          :List of 4
#>   .. .. ..$ bounds       :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. ..$ northeast:List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lat: num 30.1
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lng: num -95
#>   .. .. .. ..$ southwest:List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lat: num 29.5
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lng: num -95.8
#>   .. .. ..$ location     :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. ..$ lat: num 29.8
#>   .. .. .. ..$ lng: num -95.4
#>   .. .. ..$ location_type: chr "APPROXIMATE"
#>   .. .. ..$ viewport     :List of 2
#>   .. .. .. ..$ northeast:List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lat: num 30.1
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lng: num -95
#>   .. .. .. ..$ southwest:List of 2
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lat: num 29.5
#>   .. .. .. .. ..$ lng: num -95.8
#>   .. ..$ place_id          : chr "ChIJAYWNSLS4QIYROwVl894CDco"
#>   .. ..$ types             :List of 2
#>   .. .. ..$ : chr "locality"
#>   .. .. ..$ : chr "political"
#>  $ status : chr "OK"

Fortunately, we can attack the problem step by step with tidyr functions. To make the problem a bit harder (!) and more realistic, I’ll start by geocoding a few cities:

city <- c("Houston", "LA", "New York", "Chicago", "Springfield")
city_geo <- purrr::map(city, geocode)

I’ll put these results in a tibble, next to the original city name:

loc <- tibble(city = city, json = city_geo)
loc
#> # A tibble: 5 x 2
#>   city        json            
#>   <chr>       <list>          
#> 1 Houston     <named list [2]>
#> 2 LA          <named list [2]>
#> 3 New York    <named list [2]>
#> 4 Chicago     <named list [2]>
#> 5 Springfield <named list [2]>

The first level contains components status and result, which we can reveal with unnest_wider():

loc %>%
  unnest_wider(json)
#> # A tibble: 5 x 3
#>   city        results    status
#>   <chr>       <list>     <chr> 
#> 1 Houston     <list [1]> OK    
#> 2 LA          <list [1]> OK    
#> 3 New York    <list [1]> OK    
#> 4 Chicago     <list [1]> OK    
#> 5 Springfield <list [1]> OK

Notice that results is a list of lists. Most of the cities have 1 element (representing a unique match from the geocoding API), but Springfield has two. We can pull these out into separate rows with unnest_longer():

loc %>%
  unnest_wider(json) %>% 
  unnest_longer(results)
#> # A tibble: 5 x 3
#>   city        results          status
#>   <chr>       <list>           <chr> 
#> 1 Houston     <named list [5]> OK    
#> 2 LA          <named list [5]> OK    
#> 3 New York    <named list [5]> OK    
#> 4 Chicago     <named list [5]> OK    
#> 5 Springfield <named list [5]> OK

Now these all have the same components, as revealed by unnest_wider():

loc %>%
  unnest_wider(json) %>% 
  unnest_longer(results) %>% 
  unnest_wider(results)
#> # A tibble: 5 x 7
#>   city   address_componen… formatted_addre… geometry place_id  types status
#>   <chr>  <list>            <chr>            <list>   <chr>     <lis> <chr> 
#> 1 Houst… <list [4]>        Houston, TX, USA <named … ChIJAYWN… <lis… OK    
#> 2 LA     <list [4]>        Los Angeles, CA… <named … ChIJE9on… <lis… OK    
#> 3 New Y… <list [3]>        New York, NY, U… <named … ChIJOwg_… <lis… OK    
#> 4 Chica… <list [4]>        Chicago, IL, USA <named … ChIJ7cv0… <lis… OK    
#> 5 Sprin… <list [5]>        Springfield, MO… <named … ChIJP5jI… <lis… OK

We can find the lat and lon coordinates by unnesting geometry:

loc %>%
  unnest_wider(json) %>% 
  unnest_longer(results) %>% 
  unnest_wider(results) %>% 
  unnest_wider(geometry)
#> # A tibble: 5 x 10
#>   city  address_compone… formatted_addre… bounds location location_type
#>   <chr> <list>           <chr>            <list> <list>   <chr>        
#> 1 Hous… <list [4]>       Houston, TX, USA <name… <named … APPROXIMATE  
#> 2 LA    <list [4]>       Los Angeles, CA… <name… <named … APPROXIMATE  
#> 3 New … <list [3]>       New York, NY, U… <name… <named … APPROXIMATE  
#> 4 Chic… <list [4]>       Chicago, IL, USA <name… <named … APPROXIMATE  
#> 5 Spri… <list [5]>       Springfield, MO… <name… <named … APPROXIMATE  
#> # … with 4 more variables: viewport <list>, place_id <chr>, types <list>,
#> #   status <chr>

And then location:

loc %>%
  unnest_wider(json) %>%
  unnest_longer(results) %>%
  unnest_wider(results) %>%
  unnest_wider(geometry) %>%
  unnest_wider(location)
#> # A tibble: 5 x 11
#>   city  address_compone… formatted_addre… bounds   lat    lng location_type
#>   <chr> <list>           <chr>            <list> <dbl>  <dbl> <chr>        
#> 1 Hous… <list [4]>       Houston, TX, USA <name…  29.8  -95.4 APPROXIMATE  
#> 2 LA    <list [4]>       Los Angeles, CA… <name…  34.1 -118.  APPROXIMATE  
#> 3 New … <list [3]>       New York, NY, U… <name…  40.7  -74.0 APPROXIMATE  
#> 4 Chic… <list [4]>       Chicago, IL, USA <name…  41.9  -87.6 APPROXIMATE  
#> 5 Spri… <list [5]>       Springfield, MO… <name…  37.2  -93.3 APPROXIMATE  
#> # … with 4 more variables: viewport <list>, place_id <chr>, types <list>,
#> #   status <chr>

Again, unnest_auto() makes this simpler with the small risk of failing in unexpected ways if the input structure changes:

loc %>%
  unnest_auto(json) %>%
  unnest_auto(results) %>%
  unnest_auto(results) %>%
  unnest_auto(geometry) %>%
  unnest_auto(location)
#> Using `unnest_wider(json)`; elements have 2 names in common
#> Using `unnest_longer(results)`; no element has names
#> Using `unnest_wider(results)`; elements have 5 names in common
#> Using `unnest_wider(geometry)`; elements have 4 names in common
#> Using `unnest_wider(location)`; elements have 2 names in common
#> # A tibble: 5 x 11
#>   city  address_compone… formatted_addre… bounds   lat    lng location_type
#>   <chr> <list>           <chr>            <list> <dbl>  <dbl> <chr>        
#> 1 Hous… <list [4]>       Houston, TX, USA <name…  29.8  -95.4 APPROXIMATE  
#> 2 LA    <list [4]>       Los Angeles, CA… <name…  34.1 -118.  APPROXIMATE  
#> 3 New … <list [3]>       New York, NY, U… <name…  40.7  -74.0 APPROXIMATE  
#> 4 Chic… <list [4]>       Chicago, IL, USA <name…  41.9  -87.6 APPROXIMATE  
#> 5 Spri… <list [5]>       Springfield, MO… <name…  37.2  -93.3 APPROXIMATE  
#> # … with 4 more variables: viewport <list>, place_id <chr>, types <list>,
#> #   status <chr>

We could also just look at the first address for each city:

loc %>%
  unnest_wider(json) %>%
  hoist(results, first_result = 1) %>%
  unnest_wider(first_result) %>%
  unnest_wider(geometry) %>%
  unnest_wider(location)
#> # A tibble: 5 x 11
#>   city  address_compone… formatted_addre… bounds   lat    lng location_type
#>   <chr> <list>           <chr>            <list> <dbl>  <dbl> <chr>        
#> 1 Hous… <list [4]>       Houston, TX, USA <name…  29.8  -95.4 APPROXIMATE  
#> 2 LA    <list [4]>       Los Angeles, CA… <name…  34.1 -118.  APPROXIMATE  
#> 3 New … <list [3]>       New York, NY, U… <name…  40.7  -74.0 APPROXIMATE  
#> 4 Chic… <list [4]>       Chicago, IL, USA <name…  41.9  -87.6 APPROXIMATE  
#> 5 Spri… <list [5]>       Springfield, MO… <name…  37.2  -93.3 APPROXIMATE  
#> # … with 4 more variables: viewport <list>, place_id <chr>, types <list>,
#> #   status <chr>

Or use hoist() to dive deeply to get directly to lat and lng:

loc %>%
  hoist(json,
    lat = list("results", 1, "geometry", "location", "lat"),
    lng = list("results", 1, "geometry", "location", "lng")
  )
#> # A tibble: 5 x 4
#>   city          lat    lng json            
#>   <chr>       <dbl>  <dbl> <list>          
#> 1 Houston      29.8  -95.4 <named list [2]>
#> 2 LA           34.1 -118.  <named list [2]>
#> 3 New York     40.7  -74.0 <named list [2]>
#> 4 Chicago      41.9  -87.6 <named list [2]>
#> 5 Springfield  37.2  -93.3 <named list [2]>

Sharla Gelfand’s discography

We’ll finish off with the most complex list, from Sharla Gelfand’s discography. We’ll start the usual way: putting the list into a single column data frame, and then widening so each component is a column. I also parse the date_added column into a real date-time¹.

discs <- tibble(disc = discog) %>% 
  unnest_wider(disc) %>% 
  mutate(date_added = as.POSIXct(strptime(date_added, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"))) 
discs
#> # A tibble: 155 x 5
#>    instance_id date_added          basic_information       id rating
#>          <int> <dttm>              <list>               <int>  <int>
#>  1   354823933 2019-02-16 17:48:59 <named list [11]>  7496378      0
#>  2   354092601 2019-02-13 14:13:11 <named list [11]>  4490852      0
#>  3   354091476 2019-02-13 14:07:23 <named list [11]>  9827276      0
#>  4   351244906 2019-02-02 11:39:58 <named list [11]>  9769203      0
#>  5   351244801 2019-02-02 11:39:37 <named list [11]>  7237138      0
#>  6   351052065 2019-02-01 20:40:53 <named list [11]> 13117042      0
#>  7   350315345 2019-01-29 15:48:37 <named list [11]>  7113575      0
#>  8   350315103 2019-01-29 15:47:22 <named list [11]> 10540713      0
#>  9   350314507 2019-01-29 15:44:08 <named list [11]> 11260950      0
#> 10   350314047 2019-01-29 15:41:35 <named list [11]> 11726853      0
#> # … with 145 more rows

At this level, we see information about when each disc was added to Sharla’s discography, not any information about the disc itself. To do that we need to widen the basic_information column:

discs %>% unnest_wider(basic_information)
#> Column name `id` must not be duplicated.
#> Use .name_repair to specify repair.

Unfortunately that fails because there’s an id column inside basic_information. We can quickly see what’s going on by setting names_repair = "unique":

discs %>% unnest_wider(basic_information, names_repair = "unique")
#> New names:
#> * id -> id...6
#> * id -> id...14
#> # A tibble: 155 x 15
#>    instance_id date_added          labels  year artists id...6 thumb title
#>          <int> <dttm>              <list> <int> <list>   <int> <chr> <chr>
#>  1   354823933 2019-02-16 17:48:59 <list…  2015 <list … 7.50e6 http… Demo 
#>  2   354092601 2019-02-13 14:13:11 <list…  2013 <list … 4.49e6 http… Obse…
#>  3   354091476 2019-02-13 14:07:23 <list…  2017 <list … 9.83e6 http… I    
#>  4   351244906 2019-02-02 11:39:58 <list…  2017 <list … 9.77e6 http… Oído…
#>  5   351244801 2019-02-02 11:39:37 <list…  2015 <list … 7.24e6 http… A Ca…
#>  6   351052065 2019-02-01 20:40:53 <list…  2019 <list … 1.31e7 http… Tash…
#>  7   350315345 2019-01-29 15:48:37 <list…  2014 <list … 7.11e6 http… Demo 
#>  8   350315103 2019-01-29 15:47:22 <list…  2015 <list … 1.05e7 http… Let …
#>  9   350314507 2019-01-29 15:44:08 <list…  2017 <list … 1.13e7 ""    Sub …
#> 10   350314047 2019-01-29 15:41:35 <list…  2017 <list … 1.17e7 http… Demo 
#> # … with 145 more rows, and 7 more variables: formats <list>,
#> #   cover_image <chr>, resource_url <chr>, master_id <int>,
#> #   master_url <chr>, id...14 <int>, rating <int>

The problem is that basic_information repeats the id column that’s also stored at the top-level, so we can just drop that:

discs %>% 
  select(-id) %>% 
  unnest_wider(basic_information)
#> # A tibble: 155 x 14
#>    instance_id date_added          labels  year artists     id thumb title
#>          <int> <dttm>              <list> <int> <list>   <int> <chr> <chr>
#>  1   354823933 2019-02-16 17:48:59 <list…  2015 <list … 7.50e6 http… Demo 
#>  2   354092601 2019-02-13 14:13:11 <list…  2013 <list … 4.49e6 http… Obse…
#>  3   354091476 2019-02-13 14:07:23 <list…  2017 <list … 9.83e6 http… I    
#>  4   351244906 2019-02-02 11:39:58 <list…  2017 <list … 9.77e6 http… Oído…
#>  5   351244801 2019-02-02 11:39:37 <list…  2015 <list … 7.24e6 http… A Ca…
#>  6   351052065 2019-02-01 20:40:53 <list…  2019 <list … 1.31e7 http… Tash…
#>  7   350315345 2019-01-29 15:48:37 <list…  2014 <list … 7.11e6 http… Demo 
#>  8   350315103 2019-01-29 15:47:22 <list…  2015 <list … 1.05e7 http… Let …
#>  9   350314507 2019-01-29 15:44:08 <list…  2017 <list … 1.13e7 ""    Sub …
#> 10   350314047 2019-01-29 15:41:35 <list…  2017 <list … 1.17e7 http… Demo 
#> # … with 145 more rows, and 6 more variables: formats <list>,
#> #   cover_image <chr>, resource_url <chr>, master_id <int>,
#> #   master_url <chr>, rating <int>

Alternatively, we could use hoist():

discs %>% 
  hoist(basic_information,
    title = "title",
    year = "year",
    label = list("labels", 1, "name"),
    artist = list("artists", 1, "name")
  )
#> # A tibble: 155 x 9
#>    instance_id date_added          title  year label artist
#>          <int> <dttm>              <chr> <int> <chr> <chr> 
#>  1   354823933 2019-02-16 17:48:59 Demo   2015 Tobi… Mollot
#>  2   354092601 2019-02-13 14:13:11 Obse…  2013 La V… Una B…
#>  3   354091476 2019-02-13 14:07:23 I      2017 La V… S.H.I…
#>  4   351244906 2019-02-02 11:39:58 Oído…  2017 La V… Rata …
#>  5   351244801 2019-02-02 11:39:37 A Ca…  2015 Kato… Ivy (…
#>  6   351052065 2019-02-01 20:40:53 Tash…  2019 High… Tashme
#>  7   350315345 2019-01-29 15:48:37 Demo   2014 Mind… Desgr…
#>  8   350315103 2019-01-29 15:47:22 Let …  2015 Not … Phant…
#>  9   350314507 2019-01-29 15:44:08 Sub …  2017 Not … Sub S…
#> 10   350314047 2019-01-29 15:41:35 Demo   2017 Pres… Small…
#> # … with 145 more rows, and 3 more variables: basic_information <list>,
#> #   id <int>, rating <int>

Here I quickly extract the name of the first label and artist by indexing deeply into the nested list.

A more systematic approach would be to create separate tables for artist and label:

discs %>% 
  hoist(basic_information, artist = "artists") %>% 
  select(disc_id = id, artist) %>% 
  unnest_longer(artist) %>% 
  unnest_wider(artist)
#> # A tibble: 167 x 8
#>     disc_id join  name        anv   tracks role  resource_url            id
#>       <int> <chr> <chr>       <chr> <chr>  <chr> <chr>                <int>
#>  1  7496378 ""    Mollot      ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 4.62e6
#>  2  4490852 ""    Una Bèstia… ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 3.19e6
#>  3  9827276 ""    S.H.I.T. (… ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 2.77e6
#>  4  9769203 ""    Rata Negra  ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 4.28e6
#>  5  7237138 ""    Ivy (18)    ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 3.60e6
#>  6 13117042 ""    Tashme      ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 5.21e6
#>  7  7113575 ""    Desgraciad… ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 4.45e6
#>  8 10540713 ""    Phantom He… ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 4.27e6
#>  9 11260950 ""    Sub Space … ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 5.69e6
#> 10 11726853 ""    Small Man … ""    ""     ""    https://api.discog… 6.37e6
#> # … with 157 more rows

discs %>% 
  hoist(basic_information, format = "formats") %>% 
  select(disc_id = id, format) %>% 
  unnest_longer(format) %>% 
  unnest_wider(format) %>% 
  unnest_longer(descriptions)
#> # A tibble: 280 x 5
#>     disc_id descriptions text  name     qty  
#>       <int> <chr>        <chr> <chr>    <chr>
#>  1  7496378 Numbered     Black Cassette 1    
#>  2  4490852 LP           <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  3  9827276 "7\""        <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  4  9827276 45 RPM       <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  5  9827276 EP           <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  6  9769203 LP           <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  7  9769203 Album        <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  8  7237138 "7\""        <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#>  9  7237138 45 RPM       <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#> 10 13117042 "7\""        <NA>  Vinyl    1    
#> # … with 270 more rows

Then you could join these back on to the original dataset as needed.