How to use R to download file from internet ?

In this article, we will be looking at the approach to download any type of file from the internet using R Programming Language. To download any type of file from the Internet download.file() function is used. This function can be used to download a file from the Internet.

Syntax: download.file(url, destfile, method, quiet = FALSE, mode = “w”, cacheOK = TRUE, extra = getOption(“download.file.extra”),headers = NULL, …)

Parameters:

• URL:-a character string (or longer vector e.g., for the “libcurl” method) naming the URL of a resource to be downloaded.
• destfile:-a character string (or vector, see URL) with the name where the downloaded file is saved.
• method:-Method to be used for downloading files.

Returns: It will save the downloaded file to the provided destination.

In this approach for Downloading any type of file using download.file() function in R language user just need to call the download.file() function which is one of the inbuilt functions of R language and passes the URL of the file which is needed to be downloaded and the destination address for saving the downloaded file.

Under this example, we will be simply assigning a URL variable to the link to a sample CSV file from the internet and setting the destination address for the downloaded file ad then calling the download.file() function and pass the URL and destination address as the parameter.

File to be downloaded: Sample-Spreadsheet-1000-rows

Program:

R

# Specify URL where file is stored
url <- "https://sample-videos.com/csv/Sample-Spreadsheet-1000-rows.csv"

destination<- "C:/Users/Geetansh Sahni/Documents/downloaded_gfg.csv"

download.file(url, destination)

Output:

Under this example, we will be simply assigning a URL variable to the link to a sample PDF file from the internet and setting the destination address for the downloaded file ad then calling the download.file() function and pass the URL and destination address as the parameter.

File to be downloaded: sample

Program:

R

# Specify URL where file is stored
url <- "https://cin.ufpe.br/~fbma/Crack/Cracking%20the%20Coding%
       20Interview%20189%20Programming%20Questions%20
       and%20Solutions.pdf"

destination<- "C:/Users/Geetansh Sahni/Documents/downloaded_gfg.pdf"

download.file(url, destination)

Output: