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%2Fs         


        

Answer 1

Here's an update as of Nov 2014. I find that setting method='curl' did the trick for me (while method='auto', does not).

For example:

# does not work
download.file(url='https://s3.amazonaws.com/tripdata/201307-citibike-tripdata.zip',
              destfile='localfile.zip')

# does not work. this appears to be the default anyway
download.file(url='https://s3.amazonaws.com/tripdata/201307-citibike-tripdata.zip',
              destfile='localfile.zip', method='auto')

# works!
download.file(url='https://s3.amazonaws.com/tripdata/201307-citibike-tripdata.zip',
              destfile='localfile.zip', method='curl')