players_data.R

players_url = "http://stats.nba.com/stats/commonallplayers?LeagueID=00&Season=2015-16&IsOnlyCurrentSeason=0"
players_data = fromJSON(players_url)
players = tbl_df(data.frame(players_data$resultSets$rowSet[[1]], stringsAsFactors = FALSE))
names(players) = tolower(players_data$resultSets$headers[[1]])

players = mutate(players,
  person_id = as.numeric(person_id),
  rosterstatus = !!as.numeric(rosterstatus),
  from_year = as.numeric(from_year),
  to_year = as.numeric(to_year),
  team_id = as.numeric(team_id)
)

if (Sys.Date() <= as.Date("2016-10-25")) {
  players = mutate(players, to_year = pmin(to_year, 2015))
}

players$name = sapply(players$display_last_comma_first, function(s) {
  paste(rev(strsplit(s, ", ")[[1]]), collapse = " ")
})

first_year_of_data = 1996
last_year_of_data = max(players$to_year)
season_strings = paste(first_year_of_data:last_year_of_data,
                       substr(first_year_of_data:last_year_of_data + 1, 3, 4),
                       sep = "-")
names(season_strings) = first_year_of_data:last_year_of_data

available_players = filter(players, to_year >= first_year_of_data)

names_table = table(available_players$name)
dupe_names = names(names_table[which(names_table > 1)])

available_players$name[available_players$name %in% dupe_names] = paste(
  available_players$name[available_players$name %in% dupe_names],
  available_players$person_id[available_players$name %in% dupe_names]
)

available_players$lower_name = tolower(available_players$name)
available_players = arrange(available_players, lower_name)

find_player_by_name = function(n) {
  filter(available_players, lower_name == tolower(n))
}

find_player_id_by_name = function(n) {
  find_player_by_name(n)$person_id
}

default_player = find_player_by_name("Stephen Curry")
default_years = as.character(default_player$from_year:default_player$to_year)
default_seasons = as.character(season_strings[default_years])
default_season = rev(default_seasons)[1]

player_photo_url = function(player_id) {
  paste0("http://stats.nba.com/media/players/230x185/", player_id, ".png")
}