nhlscraper

Overview

nhlscraper is a CRAN-approved R-package for scraping NHL data using the NHL and ESPN APIs. It primarily wraps endpoints documented by Zachary Maludzinski, Drew Hynes, and Joseph Wilson; it also includes newly discovered endpoints by myself. It covers data from high-level multi-season summaries and award winners to low-level play-by-play logs and sports books’ odds. Since the NHL API endpoints got reworked in 2023, many of the earlier scrapers became defunct; this one should be updated for the new endpoints.

Prerequisite

• R/RStudio; you can check out my tutorial if you are not familiar!

Installation

Install the official version from CRAN with:

install.packages('nhlscraper')

Install the development version from GitHub with:

install.packages('devtools')
devtools::install_github('RentoSaijo/nhlscraper')

Disclosure

1. The ESPN API functions (all starts with get_espn_) uses different sets of IDs and terminologies than the NHL API functions. For example, seasons are encoded in YYYY, the last 4 numbers in the YYYY-YYYY format; athletes refer to players; and events refer to games. These functions exist to help you access information that may not be available solely with the NHL API functions; therefore, I purposely ignored endpoints like those to access basic statistics as they’re redundant if they co-exist with the NHL API functions.
2. Most, if not, all of these endpoints are unofficially documented (i.e. hidden); therefore, it is all of our responsibilities to hit these endpoints with care. For example, endpoints that contain historical data and other mostly static data should only be hit once and stored in a database (e.g. MySQL) for further query. We do not know the exact rate limits for these APIs; don’t ruin the fun for all of us!