How to convert an portion of an XML into a data frame? (properly)

Question

I am trying to extract information from an XML file from ClinicalTrials.gov. The file is organized in the following way:

  ...
  

        

Answer 1

This answer converts the XML to a list, unlists each location section, transposes the section, converts the section to a data.table, and then uses rbindlist to merge all of the individual locations into one table. The fill=T argument matches the elements by name, and fills in missing element values with NA.

library(XML); library(data.table)

clinicalTrialUrl <- "http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01480479?resultsxml=true"
xmlDoc <- xmlParse(clinicalTrialUrl, useInternalNode=TRUE)

xmlToDT <- function(doc, path) {
  rbindlist(
    lapply(getNodeSet(doc, path),
           function(x) data.table(t(unlist(xmlToList(x))))
    ), fill=T)
}

locationDT <- xmlToDT(xmlDoc, "//location")
locationDT[1:6]
##                                                                       facility.name facility.address.city facility.address.state facility.address.zip
## 1:                                                                "HYGEIA" Hospital               Marousi     District of Attica               151 23
## 2: Allina Health, Abbott Northwestern Hospital, John Nasseff Neuroscience Institute           Minneapolis              Minnesota                55407
## 3:                  Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Kochi                 Kochi                 Kerala              682 026
## 4:                                                      Anne Arundel Medical Center             Annapolis               Maryland                21401
## 5:                                                              Atlanta Cancer Care               Atlanta                Georgia                30005
## 6:                                                                    Austin Health            Heidelberg               Victoria                 3084
##    facility.address.country
## 1:                   Greece
## 2:            United States
## 3:                    India
## 4:            United States
## 5:            United States
## 6:                Australia