[R] RCurl: using netrc with curlPerform

Wed Aug 27 18:56:45 CEST 2008

Thanks Martin!
Valerie

Martin Morgan wrote:
> Hi Valerie --
>
> curlPerform is expecting the url to be an option that is named, i.e.,
>
>   
>> myopts <-curlOptions(netrc=1)
>> url <- "http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/testPassword/index.html"
>> cat(curlPerform(url=url, .opts=myopts))
>>     
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
> <html> <head>
> <title>Basic Password Test</title>
> </head>
>
> <body>
> <h1>Basic Password Test</h1>
> This is a test page.
> If you can read it, you have correctly supplied
> the password.
>
>
> <hr>
> <address><a href="http://stat.ucdavis.edu/~duncan">Duncan Temple Lang</a>
> <a href=mailto:duncan at wald.ucdavis.edu>&lt;duncan at wald.ucdavis.edu&gt;</a></address>
> <!-- hhmts start -->
> Last modified: Sun Aug  1 13:57:44 PDT 2004
> <!-- hhmts end -->
> </body> </html>
>
> (also curlPerform(url=url, netrc=1))
>
> Martin
>
>
> Valerie Obenchain <vobencha at fhcrc.org> writes:
>
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am having trouble getting the curlPerform function to authenticate
>> using the .netrc file. From the documentation I've read it
>> certainly seems as though this function should be able to authenticate
>> via the .netrc file. 
>>
>> The example I am using here comes from the "R as a Web Client- the
>> RCurl package" paper and demonstrates using the .netrc file to access
>> the www.omegahat.org page. Authentication takes place by RCurl (curl)
>> reading the username and password out of the .netrc file in the user's
>> home directory. For this example the username is bob and password is
>> welcome. The .netrc file in the user's home directory contains the
>> following information:
>> machine www.omegahat.org
>> login bob
>> password welcome
>>
>>
>> I can successfully use the .netrc file with the getURL function:
>>  > getURL("http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/testPassword/index.html", netrc=1)
>>
>> [1] "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN\">\n<html> <head>\n<title>Basic Password Test</title>\n</head>\n\n<body>\n<h1>Basic Password Test</h1>\nThis is a test page.\nIf you can read it, you have correctly supplied\nthe password.\n\n\n<hr>\n<address><a href=\"http://stat.ucdavis.edu/~duncan\">Duncan Temple Lang</a>\n<a href=mailto:duncan at wald.ucdavis.edu>&lt;duncan at wald.ucdavis.edu&gt;</a></address>\n<!-- 
>> hhmts start -->\nLast modified: Sun Aug  1 13:57:44 PDT 2004\n<!--
>> hhmts end -->\n</body> </html>\n"
>>
>>
>> When I try to do the same with the curlPerform function I get an error
>> saying that the curl option is not recognized. I have tried 3
>> different
>> ways of instructing the curlPerform function to use the .netrc file
>> (in the .opts, curl handle and the ... argument) but got the same
>> error message each time.
>>
>> # Failed attempt using .opts construct
>> myopts <-curlOptions(netrc=1)
>> curlPerform("http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/testPassword/index.html",
>> .opts=myopts)
>>
>> # Failed attempt using curl handle
>> handle <- getCurlHandle(netrc=1)
>> curlPerform("http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/testPassword/index.html",
>> curl=handle)
>>
>> # Failed attempt using ... construct
>> curlPerform("http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/testPassword/index.html",
>> netrc=1)
>>
>> Common error message for all failed attempts:
>> Error in mapCurlOptNames(names(.els), asNames = TRUE) :
>>   Unrecognized CURL options:
>>
>>
>> Valid curl option names are listed by typing listCurlOptions() and
>> netrc is one of the options. The mapCurlOptNames code is not available
>> for the user to view so I'm not able to deduce anything more from the
>> error message.
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Valerie
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>     
>
>