Pulling ACS data from Infochimps Geo API in R

infochimps_geo.R

library(RJSONIO)
library(ggplot2)

api.uri <- "http://api.infochimps.com/"
acs.topline <- "social/demographics/us_census/topline/search?"
api.key <- "apikey=xxxxxxxxxx" # replace the x's with your Infochimps API key

radius <- 10000  # in meters
lat <- 44.768202
long <- -91.491603

uri <- paste(api.uri, acs.topline, api.key, "&g.radius=", radius, "&g.latitude=", lat, "&g.longitude=", long, sep="")

raw.data <- readLines(uri, warn="F")
results <- fromJSON(raw.data)

## Special thanks to Patrick Hausmann for the GetData function
GetData <- function(x) {
    L <- vector(mode="list", length = x$total)

    a1 <- sapply(x$results, function(z) sapply(z, length) )
    xn <- names( which(apply(a1, 1, function(z) all(z == 1) )) )
    a2 <- lapply(x$results, function(z) z[names(z) %in% xn] )

    for (i in seq_along(a2)  ) {
       x1 <- a2[[i]]
       x2 <- data.frame(x1)
       L[[i]] <- x2
    }

    x4 <- do.call(rbind, L)
    return(x4)
}

md <- GetData(results)
str(md)

qplot(median_household_income, data=md, geom="density")

Thanks, Patrick. That works really well and is exactly what I was wanting to be able to do. I modified the Gist with your contribution.

Dave, there's an error in my example, so Line 19 should be:
L <- vector(mode="list", length = x$total)