Read Data and Code from a URL

Description

Extensions of read.table, scan, source and file.show to read text files on a remote server.

Usage

read.table.url(url, method="auto",...)
scan.url(url, method="auto", ...)
source.url(url, method="auto", ...)
url.show(url, title = url, file = tempfile(),
         delete.file = TRUE, ...)

Details

These functions call download.file to create a temporary local file. The file can be downloaded by lynx or wget if these are available on the system. Another option is a direct HTTP socket connection, if the local machine allows this.

Value

The same value as the respective file-based functions.

See Also

read.table, scan, source, make.socket, read.socket, file.show,download.file

Examples

read.table.url("http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/jcgs/tu",skip=4,header=T)
url.show("http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/csb/ch11b.txt")
beaver<-read.table.url("http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/csb/ch11b.dat",
  col.names=c("obsnum","day","time","temperature","activity"),row.names=1)
# the next two examples will only work if socket connections to
# statlib are allowed from your site.
url.show("http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/csb/ch3a.txt",
                  method="socket")
ozone<-read.table.url("http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/csb/ch3a.dat",
  col.names=c("date","day.cts","day.passive","night.cts","night.passive"),
  na.strings=".", method="socket")