[Bioc-devel] How to fetch HTTP headers using RCurl

[Seth Falcon]

Hi all,

With Duncan's help, I figured out how to get RCurl to fetch _just_ the
HTTP headers for a URL and not actually download anything.  This is
useful, for example, to determine the size of a download.  In case
others are interested in how to do this, read on...

Here's the basic voodoo:

library("RCurl")
h <- basicTextGatherer()
junk <- getURI(url, writeheader=h$update, header=TRUE, nobody=TRUE)
h$value()


+ seth