[R] Opening or activating a URL to access data, alternative to browseURL

[Ryan Utz]

Hi all,

I've got a situation that involves activating a URL so that a link to some
data becomes available for download. I can easily use 'browseURL' to do so,
but I'm hoping to make this batch-process-able, and I would prefer to not
have 100s of browser windows open when I go to download multiple data sets.

Here's the example:

#1
browseURL('
http://pick18.discoverlife.org/mp/20m?plot=2&kind=Hypoprepia+fucosa&site=33.9+-83.3&date1=2011,2012,2013&flags=build_txt:
')
# This opens the URL and creates a link to machine-readable data on the
page, which I can then download by simply doing this:

#2
read.delim('
http://pick18.discoverlife.org/tmp/Hypoprepia_fucosa_33.9_-83.3_2011,2012,2013.txt
')

However, I can only get the second line above to work if the thing in line
#1 has been opened in a browser already. Is there any way to allow me to
either 1) close the browser after it's been opened or 2) execute the line
#2 above without having to open a browser? We have hundreds of species that
you can see after the '&kind=' bit of the URL, so I'm trying to keep the
browsing situation sane.

Thanks!
R

-- 

Ryan Utz, Ph.D.
Assistant professor of water resources
*chatham**UNIVERSITY*
Home/Cell: (724) 272-7769

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