I’m completely new to working with APIs in R and need some guidance on where to begin. I want to fetch airline pricing information from a rapid-api service into my R environment. I already have an active account with them. The API documentation shows the endpoint details but I’m not sure how to write the R code to make the connection. What would be the basic structure for an R script to call this type of API? I’ve been looking at different packages like httr but I’m not sure which approach is best for beginners. Any sample code or step-by-step guidance would be really helpful.
Had the same struggle when I started with flight APIs. httr is perfect for beginners, but getting the authentication headers right was a pain. For RapidAPI, you need both X-RapidAPI-Key and X-RapidAPI-Host headers in your GET request. I’d start with a simple test call - use httr::GET() with add_headers() to pass your API key. Always check the response status with status_code() before parsing the JSON. Watch out for rate limits on flight APIs - I got blocked a few times before adding Sys.sleep() between calls. Use jsonlite to parse responses into dataframes.
Start with basic httr - don’t overthink it. Grab your RapidAPI key from the dashboard and test a simple GET call. I always mess up the endpoint URL format first, so double-check that. RapidAPI needs specific host headers for each service, so copy exactly what’s in their docs. Once you get one successful response, the rest clicks into place.
Go with httr2 over httr - it’s newer and handles errors way better. For RapidAPI, I set up a base request object first when I’m making multiple calls. Use request() for your base URL, then pipe req_headers() for auth. Here’s what tripped me up at first: the API can return 200 status but still have errors in the response body. Check both the status code AND the actual content before you process anything. Also, use req_throttle() instead of manual delays - it’ll handle rate limits automatically.