Statistics of Twitter clients by a list of users

gistfile1.r

library(RCurl)
library(RJSONIO)
library(XML)

# Function for getting a selection (here 100) of Twitter sources, ie clients used by a given user
get_clients <- function(user) {
  u <- paste("https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?", 
             "&screen_name=", user, "&count=100", sep = "")
  json <- getURL(u)
  dat <- fromJSON(json)
  sapply(dat, function(d) d$source)
}

# Initialize a char vector for storing all source info
cl.all <- character(0)

# Get client info by user
# ppl = list of Twitter screen names
for (i in 1:length(ppl))
{
  cl <- get_clients(ppl[i])
  cl.all <- c(cl, cl.all)
}

# Get the name of the client
# Code from cran.r-project.org/web/packages/twitteR/vignettes/twitteR.pdf

clients <- gsub("</a>", "", cl.all)
clients <- strsplit(clients, ">")
clients <- sapply(clients, function(x) ifelse(length(x) > 1, x[2], x[1]))

# Plot a dotchart
op <- par(xaxs="i")
dotchart(table(clients), cex= .4, main="Twitter client stats", xlim=c(0, 5000))