Get Currency Codes for St. Louis Fed FRED with R

getFredCurrencies.R

#ugly but works
#should verify that I do not belong on the R Core Team


getFredCurrencies <- function (){
  
  require(XML)
  
  doc <- htmlParse("http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/categories/94")
  
  
  currencyList <- xpathSApply(
    doc,
    path = '//*[contains(concat( " ", @class, " " ), concat( " ", "series-title", " " ))]'
  )
  
  currencies <- do.call(rbind,
    lapply(currencyList,function(curr){
      curr.df = data.frame(
        xmlGetAttr(curr,"href"),
        xmlValue(curr),
        stringsAsFactors=F
      )
      curr.df[,1] = strsplit(curr.df[,1],"[/ || \\?]")[[1]][4]
      colnames(curr.df) <- c("code","title")
      return(curr.df)
    })
  )
  return(currencies)
}