Montreal FSA Scraping

NOTE: This document does not provide a complete list of FSAs, so it’s only useful for the scraping example. See Part Dieux for a more complete listing based on the economic region in question.

There’s no official database that I can find to define clearly some of the economic areas in Montreal, at least none that are free. However, wikipedia does seem to be rather well organized in this regard. Small scale scraping to identify FSAs for a particular locale, in the example below, Montérégie or “Rive-Sud” an affluent part of the greater Montreal area.

library(rvest)  
links <- read_html("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Shore_(Montreal)") %>%  
  html_node(css = ".column-count-3") %>% 
  html_nodes("a") %>% 
  html_attr("href")

links <- paste0("http://en.wikipedia.org",links)  
listing <- list()  
for(link in links) {  
  listing[[link]] <- read_html(link) %>% html_node(".adr") %>% html_text()
}

So far so good, but it looks like a bit of extra cleaning will be required.

> listing %>% unlist() %>% as.character %>% strsplit(",") %>% unlist()
 [1] "J3G to J3H"  "J4B"         "J4W to J4Z"  "J5R"         "J3L"        
 [6] "J3L"         "J6J"         " J6K"        "J5B"         "J0L1B0"     
[11] NA            "J5R"         "J3Y"         " J3Z"        " J4G to J4N"
[16] " J4T"        " J4V"        "J4V"         "J3Y"         " J3Z"       
[21] " J4T"        NA            NA            "J3G 6N9"     "J3H"        
[26] "J3H 2M6"     "J3L"         "J0L 1N0"     "J3N"         "J3V"        
[31] "J5A"         "J0L 2A0"     "J3E"         "J5C"         "J4P"        
[36] " J4R"        " J4S"        "J3L 6Z5"     "J0L 2K0"     "J3X"     

trim <- function (x) gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$", "", x)  
listing %>%  
  unlist() %>% 
  as.character %>% 
  strsplit(",") %>% 
  unlist() %>% 
  strsplit("to") %>% 
  unlist %>% 
  na.omit() %>% 
  trim %>% 
  substr(start = 0, stop = 3)

And we have a list of FSAs for Montérégie pulled from what we hope is a good resource:

J3G  
J3H  
J4B  
J4W  
J4Z  
J5R  
J3L  
J3L  
J6J  
J6K  
J5B  
J0L  
J5R  
J3Y  
J3Z  
J4G  
J4N  
J4T  
J4V  
J4V  
J3Y  
J3Z  
J4T  
J3G  
J3H  
J3H  
J3L  
J0L  
J3N  
J3V  
J5A  
J0L  
J3E  
J5C  
J4P  
J4R  
J4S  
J3L  
J0L  
J3X