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()
.
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).
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.