Downloading a RDA file from Github

Question

The package for O'Reily's new Learning R book (called "learningr") does not work in R v3. Fortunately, the dataset I want from the package is on the package's Github page here called english_monarchs.rda.

However, for the life of me I cannot figure out how to download the rda file. This is my best attempt:

> library(RCurl)
> 
> x <- getURL("https://github.com/richierocks/learningr/blob/master/data/english_monarchs.rda"); x
[1] "\n\n\n<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n  <head prefix=\"og: http://ogp.me/ns# fb: http://ogp.me/ns/fb# githubog: http://ogp.me/ns/fb/githubog#\">\n    <meta charset='utf-8'>\n    <meta http-equiv=\"X-UA-Compatible\" content=\"IE=edge\">\n        <title>learningr/data/english_monarchs.rda at master · richierocks/learningr · GitHub</title>\n    <link rel=\"search\" type=\"application/opensearchdescription+xml\" href=\"/opensearch.xml\" title=\"GitHub\" />

It goes on like this through all the html of the page, I cut it short since you get the point. I get the html but not the file itself.

Any help would be much appreciated.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 02 '13 at 18:08

3

Did you try clicking on "View Raw"?

answered Nov 02 '13 at 18:08

Vidya

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 02 '13 at 18:17

There may be a better way to do this, but if you want to do this entirely automatically/within R:

library(RCurl)
## paste URL to make it easier to read code (cosmetic!)
dat_url <- paste0("https://raw.github.com/richierocks/",
                  "learningr/master/data/english_monarchs.rda")
f <- getBinaryURL()
L <- load(rawConnection(f))

(To deal with the redirection, I downloaded the file in Firefox and then asked Firefox to copy the actual download link.)

By the way, are you sure learningr doesn't work with R 3.+ ? I followed the installation instructions at https://github.com/richierocks/learningr/blob/master/README.md with R-devel and they seemed to work fine ...

Downloading a RDA file from Github

2 Answers2