repmis (version 0.2.6.2)

source_data: Load plain-text data from a URL (either http or https)

Description

source_data loads plain-text formatted data stored at a URL (both http and https) into R.

Usage

source_data(url, sha1 = NULL, sep = ",", header = TRUE)

Arguments

url

The plain-text formatted data's URL.

sha1

Character string of the file's SHA-1 hash, generated by source_data. Note if you are using data stored using Git, this is not the file's commit SHA-1 hash.

sep

The separator method for the data. For example, to load comma-separated values data (CSV) use sep = "," (the default). To load tab-separated values data (TSV) use sep = "t".

header

Logical, whether or not the first line of the file is the header (i.e. variable names). The default is header = TRUE.

Value

• a data frame

source

Based on source_url from the Hadley Wickham's devtools package.

Details

Loads plain-text data (e.g. CSV, TSV) data from a URL. Works with both HTTP and HTTPS sites. Note: the URL you give for the url argument must be for the RAW version of the file. The function should work to download plain-text data from any secure URL (https), though I have not verified this.

From the source_url documentation: "If a SHA-1 hash is specified with the sha1 argument, then this function will check the SHA-1 hash of the downloaded file to make sure it matches the expected value, and throw an error if it does not match. If the SHA-1 hash is not specified, it will print a message displaying the hash of the downloaded file. The purpose of this is to improve security when running remotely-hosted code; if you have a hash of the file, you can be sure that it has not changed."

See Also

httr and read.table

Examples

# Download electoral disproportionality data stored on GitHub
# Note: Using shortened URL created by bitly
DisData <- source_data("http://bit.ly/156oQ7a")

# Check to see if SHA-1 hash matches downloaded file
DisDataHash <- source_data("http://bit.ly/Ss6zDO",
 sha1 = "dc8110d6dff32f682bd2f2fdbacb89e37b94f95d")