Scraping html tables into R data frames using the XML package

Question

How do I scrape html tables using the XML package?

Take, for example, this wikipedia page on the Brazilian soccer team. I would like to read it in R and get the "list of all matches Brazil have played against FIFA recognised teams" table as a data.frame. How can I do this?

Answer 1

…or a shorter try:

library(XML)
library(RCurl)
library(rlist)
theurl <- getURL("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_national_football_team",.opts = list(ssl.verifypeer = FALSE) )
tables <- readHTMLTable(theurl)
tables <- list.clean(tables, fun = is.null, recursive = FALSE)
n.rows <- unlist(lapply(tables, function(t) dim(t)[1]))

the picked table is the longest one on the page

tables[[which.max(n.rows)]]