Digest link header in paginated GitHub API request

digest_header_links.R

#' Digest the Link header in a paginated result.
#' 
#' Converts the Link header from a monolithic string to a usable data.frame.
#' 
#' The GitHub API automatically paginates when the number of requested items 
#' exceeds the number of items per page. When this occurs, the result returned 
#' by the server will include a Link header that provides the URLs for other 
#' pages of results, such as the next page and the last page. These assorted 
#' URLs are catenated in a single string and this function converts that 
#' information into a data.frame that is useful for traversing the pages.
#' 
#' @param x Output of a function that gets potentially paginated results, e.g., 
#'   \code{get.*.repositories()}
#'   
#' @return A data.frame, one row per URL = page. Maximum number of rows is four:
#'   one each for "next", "last", "first", and "prev" page, indicated by the 
#'   \code{rel} variable. The \code{per_page} variable will be constant across 
#'   all rows and gives the number of items per page. If header contains no
#'   links at all, the return value is NULL and a message is given.
#'   
#' @references 
#' \url{https://developer.github.com/guides/traversing-with-pagination/} 
#' \url{https://developer.github.com/v3/#pagination}
#' 
#' @examples
#' repos  <- get.organization.repositories(org = "STAT545-UBC", per_page = 1)
#' digest_header_links(repos)
digest_header_links <- function(x) {
  y <- x$headers$link
  if(is.null(y)) {
    message("No links found in header.")
    return(NULL)
  }
  y %>%
    str_split(", ") %>% unlist %>%  # split into e.g. next, last, first, prev
    str_split_fixed("; ", 2) %>%    # separate URL from the relation
    plyr::alply(2) %>%              # workaround: make into a list
    dplyr::as_data_frame %>%        # convert to data.frame, no factors!
    setNames(c("URL", "rel")) %>%   # sane names
    dplyr::mutate_(rel = ~ str_match(rel, "next|last|first|prev"),
                   per_page = ~ str_match(URL, "per_page=([0-9]+)") %>%
                     `[`( , 2) %>% as.integer,
                   page = ~ str_match(URL, "&page=([0-9]+)") %>%
                     `[`( , 2) %>% as.integer,
                   URL = ~ str_replace_all(URL, "<|>", ""))
}

Excellent! I know you probably won't see this, @aronlinberg, because Gist comments don't trigger notifications, but I'll still reply in case you do: The dplyr::as_data_frame() thing is probably because I've installed from GitHub and you from CRAN (or GitHub, but not as recent).