[R] read data from a URL with login required

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 20/07/2013 16:43, Hui Du wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> How to read a URL requiring log in info in R? For example, I want to download some info from Linkedin pages, my username is abc, password is 123. How can I download my desired URL page in R?

It really depends what 'login' means.  For some sites this can be 
incorporated into a URL of the form "http://user:passwd@foo.dom.com": 
for others a multi-stage interaction is required.

I would try to do it using e.g. wget or curl and capture the output via 
system().  If curl works, you most likely can do the same with package 
RCurl.

Note that the help for tools usually calls such things 'authentication' 
and reserves 'login' for an ftp URL (you did not tell us the scheme).

Also note: any more detail would be appropriate only for the R-devel 
list (see the posting guide).

> Many thanks.
>
> HXD
>


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595