Process Stanford course XML data into a data frame

Parses XML data containing Stanford University course information into a structured data frame. The function processes detailed course data including basic course information, section details, schedules, and instructor information.

Usage

process_courses_xml(xml_doc, department)

Arguments

xml_doc

An xml2 document object containing Stanford course data. Expected to have a structure with course nodes containing section and schedule information.

department

Character string. Department code (e.g., "CS") used to identify the department for all courses in the XML.

Value

A tibble containing course information with columns:

• objectID: Character. Unique course identifier

• year: Character. Academic year

• subject: Character. Subject code

• code: Character. Course number

• title: Character. Course title

• description: Character. Course description

• units_min: Numeric. Minimum units

• units_max: Numeric. Maximum units

• Additional columns for section, schedule, and instructor information when available

• department: Character. Department code

NULL if no courses are found (with a warning)

Details

The function processes course data in several stages:

1. Locates all course nodes in the XML using XPath

2. For each course:

   • Extracts basic course information (ID, title, units, etc.)

   • Extracts section data including schedules and instructors

   • Joins section data with basic course information

3. Adds department code to all courses

Course sections may include:

• Term information

• Class components (e.g., lecture, discussion)

• Schedule details (days, times, locations)

• Instructor information

• Enrollment data

See also

• extract_basic_course_info() for basic course data extraction

• extract_section_data() for section and schedule processing

• fetch_department_courses() for the public interface to this functionality

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
xml_data <- xml2::read_xml("cs_courses.xml")
cs_courses <- process_courses_xml(xml_data, "CS")
} # }