Getting Started with nycOpenData

knitr::opts_chunk$set(warning = FALSE, message = FALSE)
library(nycOpenData)
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union

Introduction

NYC has a population of almost 8.5 million people. By calling 311, residents are able to make comments, inquiries, complaints, and requests to the city agencies. All 311 service requests are contained in the dataset, found here. In R, the nycOpenData package can be used to pull this data directly.

The nycOpenData package provides a streamlined interface for accessing New York City’s vast open data resources. It connects directly to the NYC Open Data Portal. It is currently utilized as a primary tool for teaching data acquisition in Reproducible Research Using R, helping students bridge the gap between raw city APIs and tidy data analysis.

By using the nyc_pull_dataset() function, we can gather the most recent 311 calls in New York City, and filter based upon any of the columns inside the dataset.

Pulling a Small Sample

To start, let’s pull a small sample to see what the data looks like. By default, the function pulls in the 10,000 most recent requests, however, let’s change that to only see the latest 3 requests. To do this, we can set limit = 3.

small_sample <- nyc_pull_dataset("nyc_311", limit = 3)
small_sample
#> # A tibble: 3 × 32
#>   unique_key created_date        agency agency_name    complaint_type descriptor
#>        <dbl> <dttm>              <chr>  <chr>          <chr>          <chr>     
#> 1   68182862 2026-03-03 02:06:07 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Posted Pa…
#> 2   68185859 2026-03-03 02:05:59 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Posted Pa…
#> 3   68184358 2026-03-03 02:05:27 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Blocked H…
#> # ℹ 26 more variables: location_type <chr>, incident_zip <dbl>,
#> #   incident_address <chr>, street_name <chr>, cross_street_1 <chr>,
#> #   cross_street_2 <chr>, intersection_street_1 <chr>,
#> #   intersection_street_2 <chr>, address_type <chr>, city <chr>,
#> #   landmark <chr>, status <chr>, community_board <chr>,
#> #   council_district <dbl>, police_precinct <chr>, bbl <dbl>, borough <chr>,
#> #   x_coordinate_state_plane <dbl>, y_coordinate_state_plane <dbl>, …

# Seeing what columns are in the dataset
names(small_sample)
#>  [1] "unique_key"               "created_date"            
#>  [3] "agency"                   "agency_name"             
#>  [5] "complaint_type"           "descriptor"              
#>  [7] "location_type"            "incident_zip"            
#>  [9] "incident_address"         "street_name"             
#> [11] "cross_street_1"           "cross_street_2"          
#> [13] "intersection_street_1"    "intersection_street_2"   
#> [15] "address_type"             "city"                    
#> [17] "landmark"                 "status"                  
#> [19] "community_board"          "council_district"        
#> [21] "police_precinct"          "bbl"                     
#> [23] "borough"                  "x_coordinate_state_plane"
#> [25] "y_coordinate_state_plane" "open_data_channel_type"  
#> [27] "park_facility_name"       "park_borough"            
#> [29] "latitude"                 "longitude"               
#> [31] "location_type_2"          "location_coordinates"

Fantastic! We successfully pulled 311 data from the NYC Open Data Portal.

Let’s now take an example of the last 3 requests from the borough Brooklyn. The nyc_311() function can filter based off any of the columns in the dataset. To filter, we add filters = list() and put whatever filters we would like inside. From our colnames call before, we know that there is a column called “borough” which we can use to accomplish this.


brooklyn_311 <- nyc_pull_dataset("nyc_311",limit = 3, filters = list(borough = "BROOKLYN"))
brooklyn_311
#> # A tibble: 3 × 32
#>   unique_key created_date        agency agency_name    complaint_type descriptor
#>        <dbl> <dttm>              <chr>  <chr>          <chr>          <chr>     
#> 1   68185859 2026-03-03 02:05:59 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Posted Pa…
#> 2   68184358 2026-03-03 02:05:27 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Blocked H…
#> 3   68184352 2026-03-03 02:04:05 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Firew… N/A       
#> # ℹ 26 more variables: location_type <chr>, incident_zip <dbl>,
#> #   incident_address <chr>, street_name <chr>, cross_street_1 <chr>,
#> #   cross_street_2 <chr>, intersection_street_1 <chr>,
#> #   intersection_street_2 <chr>, address_type <chr>, city <chr>,
#> #   landmark <chr>, status <chr>, community_board <chr>,
#> #   council_district <dbl>, police_precinct <chr>, bbl <dbl>, borough <chr>,
#> #   x_coordinate_state_plane <dbl>, y_coordinate_state_plane <dbl>, …

# Checking to see the filtering worked
brooklyn_311 |>
  distinct(borough)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 1
#>   borough 
#>   <chr>   
#> 1 BROOKLYN

Success! From calling the brooklyn_311 dataset we see there are only 3 rows of data, and from the distinct() call we see the only borough featured in our dataset is BROOKLYN.

One of the strongest qualities this function has is its ability to filter based off of multiple columns. Let’s put everything together and get a dataset of the last 50 311 requests from the New York Police Department in Brooklyn.

# Creating the dataset
brooklyn_nypd <- nyc_pull_dataset("nyc_311", limit = 50, filters = list(agency = "NYPD", borough = "BROOKLYN"))

# Calling head of our new dataset
brooklyn_nypd |>
  slice_head(n = 6)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 36
#>   unique_key created_date        agency agency_name    complaint_type descriptor
#>        <dbl> <dttm>              <chr>  <chr>          <chr>          <chr>     
#> 1   68185859 2026-03-03 02:05:59 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Posted Pa…
#> 2   68184358 2026-03-03 02:05:27 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Parki… Blocked H…
#> 3   68184352 2026-03-03 02:04:05 NYPD   New York City… Illegal Firew… N/A       
#> 4   68176886 2026-03-03 02:02:12 NYPD   New York City… Blocked Drive… No Access 
#> 5   68182906 2026-03-03 02:01:53 NYPD   New York City… Noise - Stree… Loud Musi…
#> 6   68184407 2026-03-03 02:01:51 NYPD   New York City… Noise - Stree… Loud Talk…
#> # ℹ 30 more variables: location_type <chr>, incident_zip <dbl>,
#> #   incident_address <chr>, street_name <chr>, cross_street_1 <chr>,
#> #   cross_street_2 <chr>, intersection_street_1 <chr>,
#> #   intersection_street_2 <chr>, address_type <chr>, city <chr>,
#> #   landmark <chr>, status <chr>, community_board <chr>,
#> #   council_district <dbl>, police_precinct <chr>, bbl <dbl>, borough <chr>,
#> #   x_coordinate_state_plane <dbl>, y_coordinate_state_plane <dbl>, …

# Quick check to make sure our filtering worked
brooklyn_nypd |>
  summarize(rows = n())
#> # A tibble: 1 × 1
#>    rows
#>   <int>
#> 1    50

brooklyn_nypd |>
  distinct(agency)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 1
#>   agency
#>   <chr> 
#> 1 NYPD

brooklyn_nypd |>
  distinct(borough)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 1
#>   borough 
#>   <chr>   
#> 1 BROOKLYN

We successfully created our dataset that contains the 50 most recent requests regarding the NYPD in the borough Brooklyn.

Mini analysis

Now that we have successfully pulled the data and have it in R, let’s do a mini analysis on using the complaint_type column, to figure out what NYC residents in Brooklyn are complaining about to the NYPD.

To do this, we will create a bar graph of the complaint types.

# Visualizing the distribution, ordered by frequency
brooklyn_nypd |>
  count(complaint_type) |>
  ggplot(aes(
    x = n,
    y = reorder(complaint_type, n)
  )) +
  geom_col(fill = "steelblue") +
  theme_minimal() +
  labs(
    title = "Most Recent NYPD 311 Complaints (Brooklyn)",
    subtitle = "Top 50 service requests",
    x = "Number of Complaints",
    y = "Type of Complaint"
  )

Bar chart showing the frequency of NYPD-related 311 complaint types in Brooklyn from the 50 most recent service requests.

This graph shows us not only which complaints were made, but how many of each complaint were made.

Summary

The nycOpenData package serves as a robust interface for the NYC Open Data portal, streamlining the path from raw city APIs to actionable insights. By abstracting the complexities of data acquisition—such as pagination, type-casting, and complex filtering—it allows users to focus on analysis rather than data engineering.

As demonstrated in this vignette, the package provides a seamless workflow for targeted data retrieval, automated filtering, and rapid visualization.

How to Cite

If you use this package for research or educational purposes, please cite it as follows:

Martinez C (2026). nycOpenData: Convenient Access to NYC Open Data API Endpoints. R package version 0.1.6, https://martinezc1.github.io/nycOpenData/.

Christian Martinez

Introduction

Pulling a Small Sample

Mini analysis

Summary

How to Cite