Setting the API key

The main thing you need to do is get an API key from Leanpub. You can do this by visiting https://leanpub.com/author_dashboard/settings if you are an author. If you are not an author, I don’t believe access to the API is possible. You can pass this api_key to functions in Leanpub (almost all prefixed by lp_), or you can set the environmental variable LEANPUB_API_KEY. You can set this in an interactive R session such as:

Sys.setenv("LEANPUB_API_KEY" = "YOUR_KEY")

or put this in your ~/.Renviron:

LEANPUB_API_KEY = "YOUR_KEY"

Getting Data about a book

You can use lp_summary or lp_book_info, these are identical, to get information about any book in Leanpub:

library(leanpubr)
slug = "biostatmethods"
res = lp_summary(slug, error = FALSE, verbose = TRUE)
#> GET command is:
#> Response [https://leanpub.com/biostatmethods.json]
#>   Date: 2018-08-14 13:57
#>   Status: 200
#>   Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
#>   Size: 1.97 kB
res$content
#> $id
#> [1] 46133
#> 
#> $title
#> [1] "Methods in Biostatistics with R"
#> 
#> $subtitle
#> [1] "A Rigorous and Practical Treatment of Biostatistics Foundations using R"
#> 
#> $slug
#> [1] "biostatmethods"
#> 
#> $about_the_book
#> [1] "<p>Biostatistics is easy to teach poorly. Too often, books focus on methodology with no emphasis on programming and practical implementations. In contrast, books focused on R programming and visualization rarely discuss foundational topics that provide the infrastructure needed by data analysts to make decisions, evaluate analytic tools, and get ready for new and unforeseen challenges. Thus, we are bridging this divide that had no reason to exist in the first place. The book is unapologetic about its focus on Biostatistics, that is Statistics with Biological, Public Health, and Medical applications, though we think that it could be used successfully for large Statistical and Data Science Courses. Data and code can be downloaded here: <a href=\"https://github.com/muschellij2/biostatmethods\" target=\"_blank\">https://github.com/muschellij2/biostatmethods</a></p>"
#> 
#> $total_revenue
#> [1] "4421.59"
#> 
#> $last_published_at
#> [1] "2018-07-23T20:58:06.000Z"
#> 
#> $word_count
#> NULL
#> 
#> $page_count
#> [1] 478
#> 
#> $word_count_published
#> NULL
#> 
#> $page_count_published
#> [1] 478
#> 
#> $total_copies_sold
#> [1] 537
#> 
#> $meta_description
#> [1] "Calculus and R based introduction to Biostatistics and Data Science"
#> 
#> $author_string
#> [1] "Ciprian Crainiceanu, Brian Caffo and John Muschelli"
#> 
#> $url
#> [1] "http://leanpub.com/biostatmethods"
#> 
#> $title_page_url
#> [1] "https://s3.amazonaws.com/titlepages.leanpub.com/biostatmethods/original?1526406340"
#> 
#> $minimum_price
#> [1] "9.99"
#> 
#> $suggested_price
#> [1] "20.0"
#> 
#> $image
#> [1] "https://s3.amazonaws.com/titlepages.leanpub.com/biostatmethods/medium?1526406340"
#> 
#> $possible_reader_count
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $pdf_published_url
#> [1] "http://leanpub.com/s/1zUsJAR0yCakLR1RtdCBNA.pdf"
#> 
#> $epub_published_url
#> [1] "http://leanpub.com/s/1zUsJAR0yCakLR1RtdCBNA.epub"
#> 
#> $mobi_published_url
#> [1] "http://leanpub.com/s/1zUsJAR0yCakLR1RtdCBNA.mobi"