[R] How to set cookies in RCurl

[Duncan Temple Lang]

To just enable cookies and their management, use the cookiefile
option, e.g.

  txt = getURLContent(url,  cookiefile = "")

Then you can pass this to readHTMLTable(), best done as

  content = readHTMLTable(htmlParse(txt, asText = TRUE))


The function readHTMLTable() doesn't use RCurl and doesn't
handle cookies.

   D.

On 6/7/12 7:33 AM, mdvaan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to access a website and read its content. The website is a
> restricted access website that I access through a proxy server (which
> therefore requires me to enable cookies). I have problems in allowing Rcurl
> to receive and send cookies. 
> 
> The following lines give me:
> 
> library(RCurl)
> library(XML)
> 
> url <- "http://www.theurl.com"
> content <- readHTMLTable(url)
> 
> content
> $`NULL`
>                                                                                                                                                                          
> V1
> 1                                                                                                                                                                           
> 2                                                                                                                                                          
> Cookies disabled
> 3                                                                                                                                                                           
> 4 Your browser currently does not accept cookies.\rCookies need to be
> enabled for Scopus to function properly.\rPlease enable session cookies in
> your browser and try again.
> 
> $`NULL`
>   V1 V2 V3
> 1         
> 
> $`NULL`
>                 V1
> 1 Cookies disabled
> 
> $`NULL`
>   V1
> 1   
> 2   
> 3  
> 
> I have carefully read section 4.4. from this:
> http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/RCurlJSS.pdf and tried the following without
> succes:
> 
> curl <- getCurlHandle()
> curlSetOpt(cookiejar = 'cookies.txt', curl = curl)
> 
> Any suggestions on how to allow for cookies?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Math
> 
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