[R-SIG-Mac] download.file suggestion: if(OSX){ use curl}

[Simon Urbanek]

download.file() and file() are two entirely independent facilities. file()/url() etc. are connections - and none of them supports https - not even on the Mac. In contrast, download.file() is simply a utility to download a file - it has nothing to do with connections (except for the fact that it may choose to use connections to accomplish the task - or not). You could equally well just call curl yourself -- and in fact that is probably the closest to what you want:

f=pipe("curl -s -S https://rforge.net")
read.table(f)
close(f)

Finally, you may want to have a look at RCurl and getURLContent() and alike.

Cheers,
Simon



On Jul 7, 2011, at 10:33 AM, Timothy Bates wrote:

> Thanks Simon: that’s good news (if somewhat hidden…)
> 
> But….
> While this works
> 
>   secureURL = "https://dl.dropbox.com/s/pl60zb6cljootdj/test.txt”
>   download.file(secureURL, "junk.txt", method=“curl”)
> 
> This doesn’t…
> 
>  read.table(secureURL)
>  # Error in file(file, "rt") : cannot open the connection
>  # In addition: Warning message:
>  # In file(file, "rt") : unsupported URL scheme
> 
> 
> The reason I thought that curl was explicitly not supported was the Rd help for <file> and <url> in ~/bin/R/trunk/src/library/base/man/connections.Rd
> 
>> url and file support URL schemes http://, ftp:// and file://.
> and
>> Note that \samp{https://} connections are
>> #ifdef unix
>>  not supported (with some exceptions on Windows).
>> #endif
>> 
> 
> 
> file() does not support this option, even if download.file() is told too.
> 
> If there is a way around this, or file and url can be changed, then I’m happy to submit Rd diffs or other help so people can find this valuable functionality at the  read.xxx level.
> 
> Something like 
> 
> url and file always support the http://, ftp:// and file:// URL schemes, and may support secure connections (https, sftp etc.).
> 
> #ifdef unix
>  Secure connections (for instance https://) are supported via use of helpers such as curl which can be set via the <download.file.method> option of download.file.
> #endif
> 
> With an example of how to do that. Thoughts welcome.
> 
> On 7 Jul 2011, at 2:33 PM, Simon Urbanek wrote:
>> On Jul 4, 2011, at 7:38 AM, Timothy Bates wrote:
>>> Currently download.file() doesn’t handle https (or anything secure)
>>> I wonder if the download.file() function could be special cased for platforms that have curl on board and use that?
>> It already supports curl so why should it special-case anything? If you want to use curl by default (I don't for example) just set the download.file.method option.
>> Cheers, Simon
> 
>