The package allows to access three different streams of Mastodon
data. Public timelines via stream_timeline_public(),
timelines from a given hashtag via
stream_timeline_hashtag() and timelines from lists via
stream_timeline_list().
Specifying parameters
By default, all functions stream statuses for 30 seconds. This can be
adjusted via the parameter timeout. If set to
Inf, data is streamed indefinitely. The parameter
file_name is used to specify to which file the data should
be written. If non is provided, a temporary file is created. However, we
recommend to always set this parameter explicitely.
For stream_timeline_public() and
stream_timeline_hashtag(), you can also decide if you want
to stream globally, or from a specific instance. If you want to stream
from a specific instance, set local=TRUE and set
instance to the desired instance. If instance is NULL, then
the function uses the instance you obtained a token from (see vignette
on authentication).
Streaming and parsing
Once parameters are specified, you can start the desired stream. Streaming will occupy your current instance of R until the specified time has elapsed or any error occurs. Streaming itself shouldn’t be very memory intensive so you can start a new R instance in parallel.
#stream a minute of all statuses
stream_timeline_public(timeout = 60, file_name = "public.json")
#stream a minute of all statuses using the rstats hashtag
stream_timeline_public(hashtag = "rstats", timeout = 60, file_name = "public.json")If verbose=TRUE, the functions will indicate when
streaming is supposed to stop and the number of statuses that have been
written to file.
Note that in contrast to rtweet, the streaming functions
never directly return any data. This can be done afterwards using
parse_stream() which reads in the json and converts it to a
data frame. Note that this process can take a while depending on the
number of statuses in the file.