bref_read_html: *Read HTML from Baseball Reference with retry on rate-limit...

In baseballr: Acquiring and Analyzing Baseball Data

Read HTML from Baseball Reference with retry on rate-limit (429)

Description

Baseball Reference rate-limits (HTTP 429) scrapers that make rapid sequential requests. xml2::read_html() has no built-in retry, so a 429 surfaces as a generic error and the caller's tryCatch swallows it into a misleading "Invalid arguments or no data available" message (#344).

This helper uses httr2::req_retry() to retry 429 / 503 responses with exponential backoff (up to 3 tries), then passes the response body to xml2::read_html(). A 5-second courtesy delay mirrors the existing NCAA scraper convention.

Usage

bref_read_html(url, max_tries = 3L)

Arguments

url	A Baseball Reference URL.
max_tries	Integer. Maximum number of attempts (default 3).

Value

An XML document as returned by xml2::read_html().

baseballr documentation built on Aug. 27, 2026, 1:07 a.m.