[R-SIG-Finance] RFC: quantmod::getSymbols.MySQL

[Zachary Deane-Mayer]

Hi Mark,

It'd be a little cumbersome, but couldn't you also source() an R script at
the start of your session that loads the parameters from .my.cnf and passes
them to options()?

Alternatively, maybe getSymbols.MySQL could look for a cnf_file option, and
then if that is not present look for a username and password?

-Zach

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 9:00 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 5:25 AM, Joshua Ulrich <josh.m.ulrich at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > As many of you know, the Defaults package was removed from CRAN on
> > 2014-10-03 at Jeff's request.  This broke a fair bit of functionality
> > in quantmod, most of which I have addressed in recent commits on
> > R-Forge.
> >
> > One issue I have not resolved is how to adapt getSymbols.MySQL to the
> > new no-Defaults paradigm.  I will be taking over as maintainer of
> > quantmod, so I am soliciting input from getSymbols.MySQL users.
> >
> > My proposed solution to getSymbols.MySQL is to look for specific
> > option()s if certain arguments are missing.  I think this is the
> > cleanest and most obvious solution, but am open to alternatives.  I
> > would use the option structure below, with only the three arguments
> > listed.
> >
> > options(quantmod.defaults = list(
> >   getSymbols.MySQL = list(
> >     user="josh",
> >     password="secret",
> >     dbname="stocks")
> >   )
> > )
> >
> > Should I consider another option structure?  Should additional
> > arguments be supported?  Anything else I'm missing?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --
> > Joshua Ulrich  |  about.me/joshuaulrich
> > FOSS Trading  |  www.fosstrading.com
> >
>
> Hi Josh,
>    I'd lobby for adding 'host' and (I think) 'port' parameters also.
> This allows you to get across the network to get the data.
>
>    As an individual user type this is OK. Not great, but OK. I'd
> probably add the code above into a file I source in most of my
> programs and it would get run. Over time I'll forget where this is
> though and will need to find it when I create new databases or change
> passwords.
>
>    In a more corporate setting (which isn't me these days) I'm not
> sure it's very good. Standard usage (on Linux anyway, not sure about
> Windows) is to have a .my.cnf file:
>
> mark at c2RAID6 ~ $ cat .my.cnf
> [client]
> user = josh
> password = secret
> host = localhost
>
> [beancounter]
> user = josh
> database = beancounter
> password = secret
> host = localhost
>
> mark at c2RAID6 ~ $
>
> If MySQL needs a password that's where it looks first. There are no
> security issues with the R code this way. If I change my password in
> MySQL then this is the one place I change it for all my programs (R or
> otherwise) that use MySQL to work. This is how I was doing it prior to
> the change with Defaults. I have no idea how much MySQL is used by
> corporate R users but I suspect they'd prefer this if it's possible.
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
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