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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="https://rud.is/b/2017/09/28/sodd-stackoverflow-driven-development/"> R – rud.is</a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
<p>I occasionally hang out on StackOverflow and often use an answer as an opportunity to fill a package void for a particular need. <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cran.r-project.org/package=docxtractr" target="_blank"><code>docxtractr</code></a> and <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cran.r-project.org/package=qrencoder" target="_blank"><code>qrencoder</code></a> are two (of many) packages that were birthed from SO answers. I usually try to answer with inline code first then expand the functionality into a package (if warranted). Some make it to CRAN (like those two), others stay on GitHub.</p>
<p>This (short) post is about two new ones: <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/hrbrmstr/webhose" target="_blank"><code>webhose</code><img alt="🔗" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f517.png" class="wp-smiley"></a> and <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/hrbrmstr/pigeon" target="_blank"><code>pigeon</code><img alt="🔗" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f517.png" class="wp-smiley"></a>. </p>
<p>The <code>webhose</code> package is an API interface package to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://webhose.io/" target="_blank">https://webhose.io/</a>, which is an interesting service that scrapes the web &amp; “dark web” and provides a short but handy API to retrieving the content using a fairly intuitive query language. </p>
<p>The <code>pigeon</code> package is a hastily-hacked-together wrapper around <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/" target="_blank"><code>pgn-extract</code></a>, a cross-platform utility written in C for working with chess game data in <a rel="nofollow" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Game_Notation" target="_blank">PGN</a> format.</p>
<p>I’m not going to have any time to round out the corners on either of those packages but will gladly <em>make time</em> to help anyone who wants to jump on board to either (or both!) of them.</p>
<p>Working on either package will let you get your feet wet (or, wetter) with R package development. They both need:</p>
<ul>
<li>more functions + docs!</li>
<li>test harness setup</li>
<li>Travis-CI, code coverage &amp; AppVeyor configs</li>
</ul>
<p>Working on <code>webhose</code> will give you experience dealing with HTTP APIs (and their API is super clean to work with) and possibly introduce you to an area of research you’re not already in.</p>
<p>Working on <code>pigeon</code> will give you experience integrating C[++] &amp; R code (and the C-library I’ve hack-wrapped definitely needs some care &amp; feeding to ensure no memory leaks are present). </p>
<p>Neither is “mission critical”. The world will gladly go on w/o either of them. But, if you wanted a judgement-free place to hone your R package skills or try/learn new things (and ask questions along the way), file an issue, drop a note in the comments or hit me up on Twitter. If you’re an experienced R package-r and want to “own” either of these, that’s <img alt="👍" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f44d.png" class="wp-smiley"> as well!</p>
<p>I’d encourage all nascent R coders to adopt “SODD” and use SO as a place to hone your skills while you help others (and you don’t need to write a package for every answer :-).</p>
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