[R] Using download.file() to grab information from a Password Protected Website

[R. Michael Weylandt]

Authenticated access is sometimes a little harder than a simple
download -- the RCurl package provides tools that will be helpful, but
you'll need to tailor things to the sort of authentication used on the
other end. getURL iprovides one example of password authentication in
the examples. If you are using ftp, also see
http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/5604

Hope this helps,

Michael

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Michael Roberts
<mtr54 at law.georgetown.edu> wrote:
> I am new to R and have been spinning my wheels on the following.
>
> *Issue:*  I have a membership to a website, and I want to grab data from
> the website using download.file().
>
> download.file(url, destfile, method, quiet = T, mode = "w", cacheOK = TRUE)
> The R Documentation is helpful.  However, I have been unsuccessful in
> figuring out how to access the website using my username and password.
>
> Using an example, can someone show me how to embed the username and
> password into download.file() so that I can grab the data?  Better yet, can
> I tell R to always use the username and password when accessing the site?
> Will I need information other than the url, username and password?
>
> Thanks for your time and help!
>
> MTR
>
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