Scraping with RHTMLForms: "Could not resolve host : NA"

Question

I'm trying to scrape data from http://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/mdrm/data-dictionary using R package RHTMLForms. I can successfully fill out and submit the first form but, in the cases where there is a second form (e.g., if you search for series "RCON", you get: "You have selected a series with segmented mnemonics"), the same approach doesn't work.

My code is below:

library(RHTMLForms)
library(RCurl)
library(XML)
mdrm.form = getHTMLFormDescription("http://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/mdrm/data-dictionary")[[1]]
fun = createFunction(mdrm.form)
results.html = fun(
    DisplayConfidentialItemsOnly = NULL,
    DisplayItemShortTitle = NULL,
    Keyword = "RCON",
    search_by = "Series", 
    SelectedCatalogItemDayCeilingRange.Key = "18",
    SelectedCatalogItemDayRange.Key = "18",
    SelectedCatalogItemMonthCeilingRange.Key = "Mar",
    SelectedCatalogItemMonthRange.Key = "Mar",
    SelectedCatalogItemReportingStatus.Key = "All",
    SelectedCatalogItemState.Key = "Opened",
    SelectedCatalogItemTimePeriod.Key = "Before",
    SelectedCatalogItemYearCeilingRange.Key = "2015",
    SelectedCatalogItemYearRange.Key = "2015",
    SelectedItemType.Key = "None",
    SelectedReportForm.Key= "Select Reporting Form",
    SelectedSeries.Key = "RCON"
)
fun2 = createFunction(getHTMLFormDescription(results.html)[[1]])
results2.html = fun2(SelectedSeries.Key = "RCON")

This gives an Error in Function: Could not resolve host: NA.

I also noticed that getHTMLFormDescription(results.html)[[1]] gives a url http://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/mdrm/data-dictionary/search/series which is not accessible in the browser. How can I resolve this?

Scraping with RHTMLForms: "Could not resolve host : NA"

0 Answers0