Making an iterative query to an SQL database - r

Question

I'm trying to get to make a query from R to a MySQL database. The query iterates over a list, and therefore changes dynamically. Each query based on each element in the list will also in general result in multiple rows being extract. The database I'm using can be downloaded from here: http://www.ghtorrent.org/msr14.html
In the end of the day all the results should end up in the same output, and look like this:
pull_req_id,user,action,created_at
12359,arthurnn,opened,1380126837
12359,rafaelfranca,discussed,1380127245
12359,arthurnn,discussed,1380127676
...
The code that I have now looks like this, but it's not working:
library(DBI)
library(RMySQL)
m <- dbDriver("MySQL");
con <- dbConnect(m, user='msr14', password='msr14', host='localhost', dbname='msr14');
all_rails_projects <- dbGetQuery(con, 'SELECT * FROM projects WHERE name = "rails";')
all_rails_prs <- dbGetQuery(con, 'SELECT id FROM pull_requests WHERE base_repo_id = 78852;')
out <- nrow(all_rails_prs)
names(out) <- as.list(all_rails_prs)
df <- c('pull_req_id', 'user', 'action', 'created_at')
out <- numeric(length(df))
names(out) <- df
for (i in nrow(all_rails_prs)) {
SQL <- paste("select user, action, created_at from
(
select prh.action as action, prh.created_at as created_at, u.login as user
from pull_request_history prh, users u
where prh.pull_request_id ='", all_rails_prs[i,], "'",
" and prh.actor_id = u.id
union
select ie.action as action, ie.created_at as created_at, u.login as user
from issues i, issue_events ie, users u
where ie.issue_id = i.id
and i.pull_request_id ='", all_rails_prs[i,], "'",
" and ie.actor_id = u.id
union
select 'discussed' as action, ic.created_at as created_at, u.login as user
from issues i, issue_comments ic, users u
where ic.issue_id = i.id
and u.id = ic.user_id
and i.pull_request_id ='", all_rails_prs[i,], "'",
"union
select 'reviewed' as action, prc.created_at as created_at, u.login as user
from pull_request_comments prc, users u
where prc.user_id = u.id
and prc.pull_request_id ='", all_rails_prs[i,], "'",
") as actions
order by created_at;", sep = "")
res <- dbGetQuery(con, SQL)
out[i] <- dbFetch(res, n = -1)
}
This generates the following error message:
Error in (function (classes, fdef, mtable) :
unable to find an inherited method for function ‘dbFetch’ for signature ‘"data.frame"’
In addition: Warning message:
In mysqlExecStatement(conn, statement, ...) :
RS-DBI driver warning: (unrecognized MySQL field type 7 in column 2 imported as character)
I've tried different variants, but they all result in some kind of error, so it seems as if I'm simply not setting up the query structure the right way. Anyone has any advice?

Answer 1

According to the docs, dbGetQuery calls fetch by default if the query is successful.
res is already a database and you can put it into out directly without having to fetch the records.
Also, if you want to store the results in a dataframe and not a list, you might want to try:
#get the results
res<-dbGetQuery(con, SQL)
#if it's not null, add the request id and rbind it to the out dataframe
if(!is.null(res)){
out<-rbind(out,cbind(rep(all_rails_prs[i,],nrow(res)),res))
}
There might also be an error in your for syntax, you might need for (i in 1:nrow(all_rails_prs))