robust_load: Robustly Load R Objects from a URL with Retry Logic

In petersenlab: A Collection of R Functions by the Petersen Lab

Robustly Load R Objects from a URL with Retry Logic

Description

Attempts to load an R object from a URL using 'load()', with automatic retries on failure. By default, it will retry indefinitely until successful.

Usage

robust_load(url, max_attempts = NULL, delay = 2, envir = .GlobalEnv, ...)

Arguments

url	A character string specifying the URL from which to load the '.RData' object.
max_attempts	The maximum number of attempts before giving up. If 'NULL' (the default), the function will retry indefinitely until successful.
delay	The number of seconds to wait between attempts (default = 2).
envir	The environment into which the data should be loaded (default is the global environment).
...	Parameters to pass to the 'load()' function

Details

This function wraps a call to 'load(url(...))' in a retry loop. It is useful when loading data from unstable remote sources (e.g., OSF, Dropbox, GitHub) where temporary network errors may occur. Users may optionally set a maximum number of retry attempts and a delay between retries. The function also closes the connection after each attempt to prevent resource leaks.

Value

Invisibly returns 'TRUE' if loading succeeds. On failure after reaching the maximum number of attempts, an error is thrown.

Examples

# Example of a successful load (will do nothing if URL is valid)

robust_load("https://osf.io/download/yx5h6/")

# Example with limited retries
robust_load("https://osf.io/download/yx5h6/", max_attempts = 4, delay = 1)

# Example of a failing load, wrapped safely to pass R CMD check
try(
  robust_load("https://osf.io/download/THISISATEST/", max_attempts = 3, delay = 1),
  silent = TRUE
)

petersenlab documentation built on Aug. 18, 2025, 5:14 p.m.