[R] RCurl unable to download a particular web page -- what is so special about this web page?
clair.crossupton at googlemail.com
clair.crossupton at googlemail.com
Tue Jan 27 17:02:40 CET 2009
Thank you. The output i get from that example is below:
> d = debugGatherer()
> getURL("http://uk.youtube.com",
+ debugfunction = d$update, verbose = TRUE )
[1] ""
> d$value()
text
"About to connect() to uk.youtube.com port 80 (#0)\n Trying
208.117.236.72... connected\nConnected to uk.youtube.com
(208.117.236.72) port 80 (#0)\nConnection #0 to host uk.youtube.com
left intact\n"
headerIn
"HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request\r\nVia: 1.1 PFO-FIREWALL\r\nConnection: Keep-
Alive\r\nProxy-Connection: Keep-Alive\r\nTransfer-Encoding: chunked\r
\nExpires: Tue, 27 Apr 1971 19:44:06 EST\r\nDate: Tue, 27 Jan 2009
15:31:25 GMT\r\nContent-Type: text/plain\r\nServer: Apache\r\nX-
Content-Type-Options: nosniff\r\nCache-Control: no-cache\r
\nCneonction: close\r\n\r\n"
headerOut
"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: uk.youtube.com\r\nAccept: */*\r\n\r\n"
dataIn
"0\r\n\r\n"
dataOut
""
>
So the critical information from this is the '400 Bad Request'. A
Google search defines this for me as:
The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed
syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without
modifications.
looking through sort(both listCurlOptions() and
http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/curl_easy_setopt.htm) doesn't really
help me this time (unless i missed something). Any advice?
Thank you for your time,
C.C
P.S. I can get the d/l to work if i use:
> toString(readLines("http://www.uk.youtube.com"))
[1] "<html>, \t<head>, \t\t<title>OpenDNS</title>, \t</head>, ,
\t<body id=\"mainbody\" onLoad=\"testforbanner();\" style=\"margin:
0px;\">, \t\t<script language=\"JavaScript\">, \t\t\tfunction
testforbanner() {, \t\t\t\tvar width;, \t\t\t\tvar height;, \t\t\t
\tvar x = 0;, \t\t\t\tvar isbanner = false;, \t\t\t\tvar bannersizes =
new Array(16), \t\t\t\tbannersizes[0] = [etc]
>
On 27 Jan, 13:52, Duncan Temple Lang <dun... at wald.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> clair.crossup... at googlemail.com wrote:
> > Thank you Duncan.
>
> > I remember seeing in your documentation that you have used this
> > 'verbose=TRUE' argument in functions before when trying to see what is
> > going on. This is good. However, I have not been able to get it to
> > work for me. Does the output appear in R or do you use some other
> > external window (i.e. MS DOS window?)?
>
> The libcurl code typically defaults to print on the console.
> So on the Windows GUI, this will not show up. Using
> a shell (MS DOS window or Unix-like shell) should
> should cause the output to be displayed.
>
> A more general way however is to use the debugfunction
> option.
>
> d = debugGatherer()
>
> getURL("http://uk.youtube.com",
> debugfunction = d$update, verbose = TRUE)
>
> When this completes, use
>
> d$value()
>
> and you have the entire contents that would be displayed on the console.
>
> D.
>
>
>
> >> library(RCurl)
> >> my.url <- 'http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07pro...
> >> getURL(my.url, verbose = TRUE)
> > [1] ""
>
> > I am having a problem with a new webpage (http://uk.youtube.com/) but
> > if i can get this verbose to work, then i think i will be able to
> > google the right action to take based on the information it gives.
>
> > Many thanks for your time,
> > C.C.
>
> > On 26 Jan, 16:12, Duncan Temple Lang <dun... at wald.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> >> clair.crossup... at googlemail.com wrote:
> >>> Dear R-help,
> >>> There seems to be a web page I am unable to download using RCurl. I
> >>> don't understand why it won't download:
> >>>> library(RCurl)
> >>>> my.url <- "http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07pro..."
> >>>> getURL(my.url)
> >>> [1] ""
> >> I like the irony that RCurl seems to have difficulties downloading an
> >> article about R. Good thing it is just a matter of additional arguments
> >> to getURL() or it would be bad news.
>
> >> The followlocation parameter defaults to FALSE, so
>
> >> getURL(my.url, followlocation = TRUE)
>
> >> gets what you want.
>
> >> The way I found this is
>
> >> getURL(my.url, verbose = TRUE)
>
> >> and take a look at the information being sent from R
> >> and received by R from the server.
>
> >> This gives
>
> >> * About to connect() towww.nytimes.comport80 (#0)
> >> * Trying 199.239.136.200... * connected
> >> * Connected towww.nytimes.com(199.239.136.200) port 80 (#0)
> >> > GET /2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?_r=2
> >> HTTP/1.1
> >> Host:www.nytimes.com
> >> Accept: */*
>
> >> < HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
> >> < Server: Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
> >> < Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:10:51 GMT
> >> < Content-length: 0
> >> < Content-type: text/html
> >> < Location:http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/t...
> >> <
>
> >> And the 301 is the critical thing here.
>
> >> D.
>
> >>> Other web pages are ok to download but this is the first time I have
> >>> been unable to download a web page using the very nice RCurl package.
> >>> While i can download the webpage using the RDCOMClient, i would like
> >>> to understand why it doesn't work as above please?
> >>>> library(RDCOMClient)
> >>>> my.url <- "http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07pro..."
> >>>> ie <- COMCreate("InternetExplorer.Application")
> >>>> txt <- list()
> >>>> ie$Navigate(my.url)
> >>> NULL
> >>>> while(ie[["Busy"]]) Sys.sleep(1)
> >>>> txt[[my.url]] <- ie[["document"]][["body"]][["innerText"]]
> >>>> txt
> >>> $`http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/
> >>> 07program.html?_r=2`
> >>> [1] "Skip to article Try Electronic Edition Log ...
> >>> Many thanks for your time,
> >>> C.C
> >>> Windows Vista, running with administrator privileges.
> >>>> sessionInfo()
> >>> R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22)
> >>> i386-pc-mingw32
> >>> locale:
> >>> LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.
> >>> 1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.
> >>> 1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252
> >>> attached base packages:
> >>> [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods
> >>> base
> >>> other attached packages:
> >>> [1] RDCOMClient_0.92-0 RCurl_0.94-0
> >>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> >>> [1] tools_2.8.1
> >>> ______________________________________________
> >>> R-h... at r-project.org mailing list
> >>>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>> PLEASE do read the posting guidehttp://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> R-h... at r-project.org mailing listhttps://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >> PLEASE do read the posting guidehttp://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-h... at r-project.org mailing list
> >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > PLEASE do read the posting guidehttp://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-h... at r-project.org mailing listhttps://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guidehttp://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
More information about the R-help
mailing list