vignettes/articles/Working_with_PurpleAir_API_Keys.Rmd
Working_with_PurpleAir_API_Keys.RmdVersion 1.1.x of the AirSensor package allows users to work with the PurpleAir API which requires API keys. This document describes how to automate work with private API keys without including them in a code reposotory where they might be seen by others.
The PurpleAir API is described at: https://api.purpleair.com/
When working with PurpleAir data, you should be aware of the following:
PurpleAir maintains a community forum with a page dedicated to obtaining an API Key: https://community.purpleair.com/t/how-to-obtain-an-api-key
global_vars.R file
It is useful to create a file where all API keys and passwords are
kept. I recommend keeping this information in a file named
global_vars.R which can be sourced at the RStudio prompt or
at the beginning of a script. Here is an example:
# global_vars.R file
# ----- PurpleAir API keys ----------------------------------------------------
PURPLE_AIR_API_READ_KEY <- "********-2A00-11EB-A8CD-42010A800126" # associated.email@gmail.com
PURPLE_AIR_API_WRITE_KEY <- "********-2A00-11EB-A8CD-42010A800126" # associated.email@gmail.com.gitignore file
To avoid uploading your private API keys to GitHub where they might
be seen by others, you should create/modify the repository
.gitignore file so that it looks something like this:
# .gitignore file
# History files
.Rhistory
.Rapp.history
# Session Data files
.RData
# User-specific files
.Ruserdata
# Example code in package build process
*-Ex.R
# Output files from R CMD build
/*.tar.gz
# Output files from R CMD check
/*.Rcheck/
# RStudio files
.Rproj.user/
# produced vignettes
vignettes/*.html
vignettes/*.pdf
# OAuth2 token, see https://github.com/hadley/httr/releases/tag/v0.3
.httr-oauth
# knitr and R markdown default cache directories
*_cache/
/cache/
# Temporary files created by R markdown
*.utf8.md
*.knit.md
# R Environment Variables
.Renviron
# ----- Local customization -----
# API Keys
global_vars.RThe AirSensor package maintains an internal set of
API keys which users can set using setAPIKey(). These keys
will be remembered for the duration of an R session. In functions that
accept an API key argument, if the passed in API key is
NULL, code will look up a specific named API key to see if
that key has been set globally. Setting keys globally is a convenience
that simplifies the scripts written by end users.
Currently supported API keys and associated functions include:
"PurpleAir-read" – Purple Air api_key used in
pas_downloadParseRawData()
pat_downloadParseRawData(),
pat_createNew().Scripts can take advantage of this as seen below:
# Script to create new pas or pat objectss
library(AirSensor)
source("./global_vars.R")
setAPIKey("PurpleAir-read", "PURPLE_AIR_API_READ_KEY")
...From this point on in the R session, all AirSensor functions that need to pull data from the PurpleAir API will send the appropriate API key and everything should work.
Best of luck working with new PurpleAir API!