Simple script to import data on COVID-19 from the CDC website.

import_cdc_covid.R

'''
A simple script to grab COVID data from the CDC

hastily typed by @mtdukes

Follow the Twitter thread for more detail:
https://twitter.com/mtdukes/status/1420191934979657731
'''

#install your packages, if you haven't already
install.packages('jsonlite')
install.packages('tidyverse')

#load libraries into your workspace
library('jsonlite')
library('tidyverse')

#load json data from the CDC URL
county_data <- fromJSON(
  'https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/COVIDData/getAjaxData?id=integrated_county_latest_external_data', 
  simplifyVector = TRUE
  #the json file includes another item that we don't want, so specify what we're interested in
  )['integrated_county_latest_external_data'] %>% 
  #turn it into a dataframe instead of a weird matrix
  as.data.frame() %>%
  #clean up the column names
  rename_with( ~ tolower( gsub('integrated_county_latest_external_data\\.' ,'', . ) ) )