Sourcing an R script from github, for global session use, from within a wrapper function?

Question

I can source an R script held on github (using the 'raw' text link) as follows:

# load package
require(RCurl)

# check 1
ls()
#character(0)

# read script lines from website
u <- "https://raw.github.com/tonybreyal/Blog-Reference-Functions/master/R/bingSearchXScraper/bingSearchXScraper.R"
script <- getURL(u, ssl.verifypeer = FALSE)
eval(parse(text = script))

# clean-up
rm("script", "u")

# check 2
ls()
#[1] "bingSearchXScraper"

However, what I would really like to do is wrap that up in a function. This is where I run into problems and I suspect it has something to do with the functions of the script only existing locally within the function it's called in. For example, here is the sort of thing I am aiming for:

source_github <- function(u) {
  # load package
  require(RCurl)

  # read script lines from website and evaluate
  script <- getURL(u, ssl.verifypeer = FALSE)
  eval(parse(text = script))
}  

source_github("https://raw.github.com/tonybreyal/Blog-Reference-Functions/master/R/bingSearchXScraper/bingSearchXScraper.R")

Many thanks in advance for your time.

Does the source_url() function in the devtools package help? — Etienne Low-Décarie, Apr 03 '12 at 22:10

score 18 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 22 '11 at 17:03

18

Use:

 eval(parse(text = script),envir=.GlobalEnv)

to stick the results into your default search space. Overwriting anything else with the same names, of course.

answered Nov 22 '11 at 17:03

Spacedman

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How to source code from private github repository ? Is there any way to provide credentials while importing url. – Soumya Boral Jun 25 '18 at 09:54

Sourcing an R script from github, for global session use, from within a wrapper function?

1 Answers1

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