This package provides a tidy interface to the Walk Score API, a proprietary API that measures a location’s “walkability” using a number between 0 and 100.
The Walk Score API has a free tier which allows 5,000 API calls per day, and paid tiers with higher limits.
This function makes it easy to spread your API calls out over a few
days. When you call the function for the first time, if necessary it
creates a new column of walks cores and assigns each row
NA. Then, each row’s walk score is populated as the
function gets a good API response. The function breaks automatically
upon detecting a rate limit, returning all results collected so far.
When your rate limit resets and you call the function again, it picks up
from the first NA walk score it finds and continues on. So
make sure to save your results after each batch, but you don’t need to
keep track of fine-grained batch issues or worry about losing a whole
batch if a response errors out–the function handles that for you.
You’ll need a valid Walk Score API key to use this package.
Please Note neither this package nor its author are affiliated with Walk Score in any way, nor are any warranties made about this package or any data available through the Walk Score API. “Walk Score” is copyrighted and a registered trademark of its owner, again, with whom we are not affiliated.
API documentation is available here: https://www.walkscore.com/professional/api.php
You can install the development version of walkscore like so:
devtools::install_github("https://github.com/chris31415926535/walkscore")
library(dplyr)
library(walkscore)
your_apikey <- "put a real API key here"
test_data <- dplyr::tibble(lat = 45.420193, lon = -75.697796) |>
walkscore::walkscore(apikey = your_apikey)See also the package walkscoreAPI available on
CRAN. Compared to walkscoreAPI, the current package
walkscore has advantages for some use cases:
walkscore uses data frames for inputs and outputs and
adheres to “tidy” design princniples; walkscoreAPI works on
single values and provides output as a list.walkscore handles batching automatically for data frame
inputs; walkscoreAPI does not.walkscore automatically handles API failures if you hit
your rate limit by returning the results so far, and will pick up where
it left off if you re-feed the output into it again once your rate limit
resets; walkscoreAPI has no such functionality.However, walkscoreAPI may be simpler if you only need to
find a few values, or if you have a professional/enterprise API key with
higher usage limits and you want to run a large volume of API calls in
parallel.
walkscoreAPI also has a number of helper functions,
whereas walkscore is focused entirely on accessing the Walk
Score API.