[R-pkg-devel] download.file and https

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 03/07/2015 5:24 AM, Paul Gilbert wrote:
> 
> 
> On 07/02/2015 10:52 PM, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>>  From R 3.2.0, check:
>>
>>> capabilities("libcurl")
>> libcurl
>>     TRUE
>>
>> TRUE means R was built such that HTTPS is supported.  If you see
>> FALSE, make sure libcurl is available when/if you build R from source.
> 
> I do have TRUE for this. The default behaviour still does not work.

Have you tried specifying the protocol explicitly, i.e.

 download.file("https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv", destfile = tmp, method="libcurl")

?

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> Paul
> 
>>
>> /Henrik
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 7:46 PM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert902 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> (This problem with download.file() affects quantmod, and possibly several
>>> other packages. e.g. getSymbols('M2',src='FRED') fails.)
>>>
>>> I think the St Louis Fed has moved to using https for connections, and I
>>> believe all the US government web sites are doing this. An http request is
>>> automatically switched to https. The default download.file method does not
>>> seem to handle this, but method="wget" does:
>>>
>>>>   tmp <- tempfile()
>>>>
>>>> download.file("http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv",
>>>> destfile = tmp)
>>> trying URL
>>> 'http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv'
>>> Error in
>>> download.file("http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv",
>>> :
>>>    cannot open URL
>>> 'http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv'
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> download.file("http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv",
>>>> destfile = tmp, method="wget")
>>> --2015-07-02 22:29:49--
>>> http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv
>>> Resolving research.stlouisfed.org (research.stlouisfed.org)... 65.89.18.120
>>> Connecting to research.stlouisfed.org
>>> (research.stlouisfed.org)|65.89.18.120|:80... connected.
>>> HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
>>> Location:
>>> https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv
>>> [following]
>>> --2015-07-02 22:29:49--
>>> https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2/downloaddata/M2.csv
>>> Connecting to research.stlouisfed.org
>>> (research.stlouisfed.org)|65.89.18.120|:443... connected.
>>> HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
>>> Length: unspecified [text/x-comma-separated-values]
>>> Saving to: ‘/tmp/RtmpOX7kA1/file1ba639d7fd0f’
>>>
>>>      [ <=>                                   ] 34,519       178KB/s   in 0.2s
>>>
>>> 2015-07-02 22:29:50 (178 KB/s) - ‘/tmp/RtmpOX7kA1/file1ba639d7fd0f’ saved
>>> [34519]
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
> 
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