search.R

## search terms
nicar18conf <- c("NICAR18", "NICAR2018", "IRE_NICAR")

## use since_id from previous search (if exists)
if (file.exists(file.path("data", "search.rds"))) {
  since_id <- readRDS(file.path("data", "search.rds"))
  since_id <- since_id$status_id[1]
} else {
  since_id <- NULL
}

## search for up to 100,000 tweets mentioning nicar18
rt <- search_tweets(
  paste(nicar18conf, collapse = " OR "),
  n = 1e5, verbose = FALSE,
  since_id = since_id,
  retryonratelimit = TRUE
)

## if there's already a search data file saved, then read it in,
## drop the duplicates, and then update the `rt` data object
if (file.exists(file.path("data", "search.rds"))) {

  ## bind rows (for tweets AND users data)
  rt <- do.call("rbind", list(rt, readRDS(file.path("data", "search.rds"))))

  ## determine whether each observation has a unique status ID
  kp <- !duplicated(rt$status_id) & !is.na(rt$status_id)

  ## the rows of users should correspond with the tweets
  rt <- rt[kp, ]
}

## save the data
saveRDS(rt, file.path("data", "search.rds"))

## save shareable data (only status_ids)
saveRDS(rt[, "status_id"], file.path("data", "search-ids.rds"))