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Trying to access an API with httr on macOS produces a certificate error.

httr::GET("https://unstats.un.org/SDGAPI/v1/sdg/Indicator/List")
#> Error in curl::curl_fetch_memory(url, handle = handle): SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired

However, running this on multiple Windows machines is successful, with no additional setup other than installing httr and running the above code (it shouldn't need a certificate). Is it something server-side that is preventing access for some reason or something client-side that I can adjust? I was unable to find anything online about general certificate issues with httr and macOS.

I can successfully access other APIs on this machine using httr, so it leads me to believe this is a server-side issue, but don't have enough experience or knowledge to fully troubleshoot this on my own.

Below is my session info for reference. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Session info:

#> R version 4.0.0 (2020-04-24)
#> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin19.4.0 (64-bit)
#> Running under: macOS Catalina 10.15.4
#> 
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS/LAPACK: /usr/local/Cellar/openblas/0.3.9/lib/libopenblasp-r0.3.9.dylib
#> 
#> locale:
#> [1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8
#> 
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
#> 
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#>  [1] Rcpp_1.0.4.6    digest_0.6.25   R6_2.4.1        magrittr_1.5   
#>  [5] evaluate_0.14   highr_0.8       httr_1.4.1      rlang_0.4.6    
#>  [9] stringi_1.4.6   curl_4.3        rmarkdown_2.1   tools_4.0.0    
#> [13] stringr_1.4.0   xfun_0.14       yaml_2.2.1      compiler_4.0.0 
#> [17] htmltools_0.4.0 knitr_1.28
caldwellst
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2 Answers2

4

I have the exact same problem since yesterday. After looking things up, turns out a common root CA certificate expired on 30th May (see this answer). In general, what solved my error is to force Curl (which supports httr functions) to ignore the certificate:

set_config(config(ssl_verifypeer = FALSE))
options(RCurlOptions = list(ssl_verifypeer = FALSE))
options(rsconnect.check.certificate = FALSE)

I knows close to nothing about server issues. But this works for me, so I hope it does for you too!

mipu
  • 74
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0

Had the similar SSL sertificate problem with the mistake

no alternative certificate subject name matches target host name

Solved with

httr::set_config(config(ssl_verifypeer = FALSE, ssl_verifyhost = FALSE))
Rui Barradas
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Aleksis
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