is it possible to process file reading and parsing in R - json

Question

There are bunch of files in a directory that has json formatted entries in each line. The size of the files varies from 5k to 200MB. I have this code to go though each file, parse the data I am looking for in the json and finally form a data frame. This script is taking a very long time to finish, in fact it never finishes.
Is there any way to speed it up so that I can read the files faster?
Code:
library(jsonlite)
library(data.table)
setwd("C:/Files/")
#data <- lapply(readLines("test.txt"), fromJSON)
df<-data.frame(Timestamp=factor(),Source=factor(),Host=factor(),Status=factor())
filenames <- list.files("Json_files", pattern="*.txt", full.names=TRUE)
for(i in filenames){
print(i)
data <- lapply(readLines(i), fromJSON)
myDf <- do.call("rbind", lapply(data, function(d) {
data.frame(TimeStamp = d$payloadData$timestamp,
Source = d$payloadData$source,
Host = d$payloadData$host,
Status = d$payloadData$status)}))
df<-rbind(df,myDf)
}
This is a sample entry but there are thousands of entries like this in the file:
{"senderDateTimeStamp":"2016/04/08 10:53:18","senderHost":null,"senderAppcode":"app","senderUsecase":"appinternalstats_prod","destinationTopic":"app_appinternalstats_realtimedata_topic","correlatedRecord":false,"needCorrelationCacheCleanup":false,"needCorrelation":false,"correlationAttributes":null,"correlationRecordCount":0,"correlateTimeWindowInMills":0,"lastCorrelationRecord":false,"realtimeESStorage":true,"receiverDateTimeStamp":1460127623591,"payloadData":{"timestamp":"2016-04-08T10:53:18.169","status":"get","source":"STREAM","fund":"JVV","client":"","region":"","evetid":"","osareqid":"","basis":"","pricingdate":"","content":"","msgname":"","recipient":"","objid":"","idlreqno":"","host":"WEB01","servermember":"test"},"payloadDataText":"","key":"app:appinternalstats_prod","destinationTopicName":"app_appinternalstats_realtimedata_topic","hdfsPath":"app/appinternalstats_prod","esindex":"app","estype":"appinternalstats_prod","useCase":"appinternalstats_prod","appCode":"app"}
{"senderDateTimeStamp":"2016/04/08 10:54:18","senderHost":null,"senderAppcode":"app","senderUsecase":"appinternalstats_prod","destinationTopic":"app_appinternalstats_realtimedata_topic","correlatedRecord":false,"needCorrelationCacheCleanup":false,"needCorrelation":false,"correlationAttributes":null,"correlationRecordCount":0,"correlateTimeWindowInMills":0,"lastCorrelationRecord":false,"realtimeESStorage":true,"receiverDateTimeStamp":1460127623591,"payloadData":{"timestamp":"2016-04-08T10:53:18.169","status":"get","source":"STREAM","fund":"JVV","client":"","region":"","evetid":"","osareqid":"","basis":"","pricingdate":"","content":"","msgname":"","recipient":"","objid":"","idlreqno":"","host":"WEB02","servermember":""},"payloadDataText":"","key":"app:appinternalstats_prod","destinationTopicName":"app_appinternalstats_realtimedata_topic","hdfsPath":"app/appinternalstats_prod","esindex":"app","estype":"appinternalstats_prod","useCase":"appinternalstats_prod","appCode":"app"}
{"senderDateTimeStamp":"2016/04/08 10:55:18","senderHost":null,"senderAppcode":"app","senderUsecase":"appinternalstats_prod","destinationTopic":"app_appinternalstats_realtimedata_topic","correlatedRecord":false,"needCorrelationCacheCleanup":false,"needCorrelation":false,"correlationAttributes":null,"correlationRecordCount":0,"correlateTimeWindowInMills":0,"lastCorrelationRecord":false,"realtimeESStorage":true,"receiverDateTimeStamp":1460127623591,"payloadData":{"timestamp":"2016-04-08T10:53:18.169","status":"get","source":"STREAM","fund":"JVV","client":"","region":"","evetid":"","osareqid":"","basis":"","pricingdate":"","content":"","msgname":"","recipient":"","objid":"","idlreqno":"","host":"WEB02","servermember":""},"payloadDataText":"","key":"app:appinternalstats_prod","destinationTopicName":"app_appinternalstats_realtimedata_topic","hdfsPath":"app/appinternalstats_prod","esindex":"app","estype":"appinternalstats_prod","useCase":"appinternalstats_prod","appCode":"app"}

Answer 1

With your example data in "c:/tmp.txt":
> df <- jsonlite::fromJSON(paste0("[",paste0(readLines("c:/tmp.txt"),collapse=","),"]"))$payloadData[c("timestamp","source","host","status")]
> df
timestamp source host status
1 2016-04-08T10:53:18.169 STREAM WEB01 get
2 2016-04-08T10:53:18.169 STREAM WEB02 get
3 2016-04-08T10:53:18.169 STREAM WEB02 get
So to adapt your code to get a list of dataframes:
dflist <- lapply(filenames, function(i) {
jsonlite::fromJSON(
paste0("[",
paste0(readLines(i),collapse=","),
"]")
)$payloadData[c("timestamp","source","host","status")]
})
The idea is to transform your lines (from readLines) into a big json array and then create the dataframe by parsing it as json.
As lmo already showcased, using lapply on your filenmaes list procide you with a list of dataframes, if you really want only one dataframe at end you can load the data.table packages and then use rbindlist on dflist to get only one dataframe.
Or if you're short in memory this thread may help you.

Answer 2

One speed up is to replace your for loop with lapply Then drop the final rbind. the speed up here would be that R would not have to repeatedly copy an increasingly large file, df over your "bunch" of files. The result would be stored in a convenient list that you could either use as is or convert to a data.frame in one go:
# create processing function
getData <- function(i) {
print(i)
data <- lapply(readLines(i), fromJSON)
myDf <- do.call("rbind", lapply(data, function(d) {
data.frame(TimeStamp = d$payloadData$timestamp,
Source = d$payloadData$source,
Host = d$payloadData$host,
Status = d$payloadData$status)}))
}
# lapply over files
myDataList <- lapply(filenames, getData)