Query the Nobelprize.org API to create a CSV table of all the literature laureates.

laureates.R

library("httr")

r_lits <- GET("http://api.nobelprize.org/v1/prize.json",query=list(category="literature"))

laureates <- content(r_lits,"parsed")$prizes # JSON

ids <- sapply(laureates,function (psn) {
    psn$laureates[[1]]$id
})


lines <- character(length(ids) + 1)
names(lines) <- c("header",ids)
lines[1] <- ""
for (i in seq_along(ids)) {
    message("Getting id ",ids[i])
    r <- GET("http://api.nobelprize.org/v1/laureate.csv",query=list(id=ids[i]))
    lau <- strsplit(content(r,encoding="utf-8"),"\n")[[1]]
    if (lines[1] == "") {
        lines[1] <- lau[1]
    }
    if (lines[1] != lau[1]) {
        warning("Deviant header for id ",ids[i],": ", lau[1])
    }
    lines[i + 1] <- lau[2]
    Sys.sleep(3)
}

writeLines(lines,"laureates.csv")