r - Nested List Parsing with jsonlite -

this second time have faced recently, wanted reach out see if there better way parse dataframes returned jsonlite when 1 of elements array stored column in dataframe list.

i know part of power jsonlite, not sure how work nested structure. in end, suppose can write own custom parsing, given there, wanted see how work data.

for example:

## options options(stringsasfactors=f)  ## packages library(httr) library(jsonlite)  ## setup gameid="2015020759" season = '20152016' base = "http://live.nhl.com/gamedata/" url = paste0(base, season, "/", gameid, "/playbyplay.json")  ## data x <- get(url)  ## parse api_response <- content(x, as="text") api_response <- jsonlite::fromjson(api_response, flatten=true)  ## data of interest pbp <- api_response$data$game$plays$play colnames(pbp) 

and exploring comes back:

> class(pbp$aoi) [1] "list" > class(pbp$desc) [1] "character" > class(pbp$xcoord) [1] "integer" 

from above, column pbp$aoi list. here few entries:

> head(pbp$aoi) [[1]] [1] 8465009 8470638 8471695 8473419 8475792 8475902  [[2]] [1] 8470626 8471276 8471695 8476525 8476792 8477956  [[3]] [1] 8469619 8471695 8473492 8474625 8475727 8476525  [[4]] [1] 8469619 8471695 8473492 8474625 8475727 8476525  [[5]] [1] 8469619 8471695 8473492 8474625 8475727 8476525  [[6]] [1] 8469619 8471695 8473492 8474625 8475727 8475902 

i don't care if parse these lists in same dataframe, have options parse out data?

i prefer take data out of out lists , parse them dataframe can "related" original record came from.

thanks in advance help.

from @hrbmstr above, able wanted using unnest.

select(pbp, eventid, aoi) %>% unnest() %>% head