I have a nested list structure with some elements (not all) having attributes that I want to keep (I've converted some xml output to a list). I'm trying to flatten it into a data.frame. The structure is something like this:
myList <- structure(list(address = structure(list(Address = list(Line = list("xxxxxxx"),
Line = list("xxxxxxx"), Line = list("xxxxxxx"), PostCode = list(
"XXX XXX"))), type = "Residential", verified = "Unverified"),
amount = structure(list(paymentAmount = list(maxAmount = list(
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("0.00")), component = "Standard"),
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("0.00")), component = "Thing1"),
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("0.00")), component = "Thing2"),
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("0.00")), component = "Thing3"),
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("0.00")), component = "Thing4"),
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("100.00")), component = "Thing5"),
amountPart = structure(list(Amount = list("0.00")), component = "Thing6")),
otherAmount = list(Amount = list("0.00")),
discount = list("0.00"),
transition = list(
"0.00"), discounts = list(), regularPayment = list(
"200.00")),
paymentInfo = list(income = structure(list(
net = list("0")), refNumber = "xxxxxxx"))),
paymentDate = "2021-03-22", startDate = "2021-02-16", endDate = "2021-03-15")),
type = "Normal")
I've tried rapply(myList, attributes) but that just seems to return NULL.
I've also tried using a loop in a recursive function:
get_attributes <- function(myList, attribute_list = NULL) {
if (is.null(attribute_list)) attribute_list <- list()
for (i in seq_along(myList)) {
if (is.list(myList[[i]])) {
attribute_list <- c(attribute_list, sapply(myList[[i]], attributes))
attribute_list <- get_attributes(myList[[i]], attribute_list)
} else {
attribute_list <- c(attribute_list, attributes(myList[[i]]))
}
}
attribute_list
}
Once I've got the list of attributes, I then want to put them in a one row data.frame - something like data.frame(address.type = "Residential", address.verified = "Unverified", component.1 = "Standard", component.2 = "Thing1"
The function with a loop is a bit messy and not very 'R', and it also seems to spit out lots of repeated elements that I don't want. Does anyone have any idea how to implement this more elegantly?
UPDATE
I've refined the loop implementation to this, which seems to work, but I just couldn't figure out how to use either purrr or one of the *apply functions in place of the loop:
get_attributes <- function(myList, attribute_list = NULL, prefix = NULL) {
if (is.null(attribute_list)) {
attribute_list <- list()
}
if (is.null(prefix)) {
prefix <- ""
}
for (i in seq_along(myList)) {
name <- names(myList)[i]
attrs <- attributes(myList[[i]])
if (!is.null(attrs)) {
names(attrs) <- paste0(prefix, name, ".", names(attrs))
attrs <- attrs[!grepl("\\.names$", names(attrs))]
attribute_list <- c(attribute_list, attrs)
}
if (is.list(myList[[i]])) {
attribute_list <- get_attributes(myList[[i]],
attribute_list,
paste0(prefix, name, "."))
}
}
attribute_list
}
do.call(data.frame, get_attributes(myList))