Have lapply continue even after encountering an error using getSymbols from quantmod

Question

I am downloading some information from yahoo finance using quantmod wrapped in an lapply statement:

require(quantmod)
tickers <- c("AAPL", "MSFT", "MKQ", "TSLA")
quotes <- lapply(tickers,function(x) getSymbols(x, src="yahoo", from="2015-02-01", auto.assign=FALSE))

The ticker MKQ is made up intentionally. I would like the loop to print the error but still create a list of xts objects with the requested data for the other 3 tickers.

I have tried to use tryCatch as follows but was unsuccessful:

quotes <- tryCatch(lapply(tickers,function(x) getSymbols(x, 
src="yahoo", from="2015-02-01", auto.assign=FALSE)) , error=function(e) NULL)

Any suggestions on how to do this? I read the documentation on tryCatch but was not able to make sense of it.

Thank you.

How were you able to find the duplicate? nrussell, was it because you answered it? I did do a search, but used terms "lapply", "error" and "continue" which are not in the title of the initial post. Thanks. — mks212, Feb 09 '15 at 22:13

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 09 '15 at 20:35

You need to put the try block inside your function:

quotes <- lapply(tickers, function(x) try(getSymbols(x, ...)))

Note we use the simpler try here. If there is an error, your quotes object will contain an object of try-error class at location of element that caused the error.

Have lapply continue even after encountering an error using getSymbols from quantmod

1 Answers1