Access a URL and read Data with R

Question

Is there a way I can specify and get data from a web site URL on to a CSV file for analysis using R?

Answer 1

base

read.csv without the url function just works fine. Probably I am missing something if Dirk Eddelbuettel included it in his answer:

ad <- read.csv("http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/Advertising.csv")
head(ad)

  X    TV radio newspaper sales
1 1 230.1  37.8      69.2  22.1
2 2  44.5  39.3      45.1  10.4
3 3  17.2  45.9      69.3   9.3
4 4 151.5  41.3      58.5  18.5
5 5 180.8  10.8      58.4  12.9
6 6   8.7  48.9      75.0   7.2

Another options using two popular packages:

data.table

library(data.table)
ad <- fread("http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/Advertising.csv")
head(ad)

V1    TV radio newspaper sales
1:  1 230.1  37.8      69.2  22.1
2:  2  44.5  39.3      45.1  10.4
3:  3  17.2  45.9      69.3   9.3
4:  4 151.5  41.3      58.5  18.5
5:  5 180.8  10.8      58.4  12.9
6:  6   8.7  48.9      75.0   7.2

readr

library(readr)
ad <- read_csv("http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/Advertising.csv")
head(ad)

# A tibble: 6 x 5
     X1    TV radio newspaper sales
          
1     1 230.1  37.8      69.2  22.1
2     2  44.5  39.3      45.1  10.4
3     3  17.2  45.9      69.3   9.3
4     4 151.5  41.3      58.5  18.5
5     5 180.8  10.8      58.4  12.9
6     6   8.7  48.9      75.0   7.2