friendly_download: Download a File With Diagnostic Error Messages

In rmoriebricklayer: Reproducible Data Capsules with Provenance and Fallback

Download a File With Diagnostic Error Messages

Description

Wraps utils::download.file() and, on failure, prints plain-language guidance for the most common academic and corporate network problems (rate limiting, TLS-inspection VPNs, DNS failures, timeouts, HTTP 403). Optionally retries from a Wayback Machine snapshot URL.

Usage

friendly_download(url, target_path, attempt_wayback = NULL)

Arguments

url	URL to download.
target_path	Destination path on disk.
attempt_wayback	Wayback Machine snapshot URL tried as a fallback if the primary download fails. When NULL (the default) a snapshot is resolved automatically via wayback_snapshot_url(); pass an explicit URL to override the lookup, or "" to disable the fallback entirely.

Value

TRUE if either the primary download or the Wayback fallback succeeds, otherwise FALSE.

Examples

ok <- friendly_download("https://cloud.r-project.org/",
                        tempfile(fileext = ".html"),
                        attempt_wayback = "")  # disable the fallback
ok

rmoriebricklayer documentation built on Aug. 5, 2026, 9:08 a.m.