getURL vs. GET

getURL_v_GET.r

library(httr); library(plyr); require(RCurl)
stackexchange_GET <- function(ids, url = "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.0/users/")
{
  res <- GET(paste0(url, ids), query = list(site = "stackoverflow"))
  json <- parsed_content(res)
  json
}

stackexchange_getURL <- function(ids, url = "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.0/users/")
{
  url2 <- paste(url, ids, "?site=stackoverflow", sep="")
  res <- getURL(url2, .opts=list(encoding="identity,gzip"))
  fromJSON(res)[[1]]
}

# GET does fine
system.time( stackexchange_GET(ids = "16632") )

system.time( stackexchange_getURL(ids = "16632") )

# GET much slower with many ids passed in to the function
system.time( replicate(3, llply(list(16632, 258662, 1097181, 1033896, 1207152, 1207153, 1207154, 1207155, 1207156), function(x) stackexchange_GET(ids=x))) )
system.time( replicate(3, stackexchange_getURL(ids = "16632;258662;1097181;1033896;1207152;1207153;1207154;1207155;1207156")) )