Download a file from HTTPS using download.file(

Question

I would like to read online data to R using download.file() as shown below.

URL <- "https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/getdata%2Fdata%2Fss06hid.csv"
download.file(URL, destfile = "./data/data.csv", method="curl")

Someone suggested to me that I add the line setInternet2(TRUE), but it still doesn't work.

The error I get is:

Warning messages:
1: running command 'curl  "https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/getdata%2Fdata%2Fss06hid.csv"  -o "./data/data.csv"' had status 127 
2: In download.file(URL, destfile = "./data/data.csv", method = "curl",  :
  download had nonzero exit status

Appreciate your help.

Answer 1

I've succeed with the following code:

url = "http://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/getdata%2Fdata%2Fss06hid.csv"
x = read.csv(file=url)

Note that I've changed the protocol from https to http, since the first one doesn't seem to be supported in R.

Answer 2

Try following with heavy files

library(data.table)
URL <- "http://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/getdata%2Fdata%2Fss06hid.csv"
x <- fread(URL)

Answer 3

You can set global options and try-

options('download.file.method'='curl')
download.file(URL, destfile = "./data/data.csv", method="auto")

For issue refer to link- https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2011-February/037723.html