Importing Excel file using url using read.xls

Question

I'm trying to use read.xls from gdata to import an Excel file directly into R. I'm on a Windows machine running 64 bit R.

I have checked my PATH variable for perl and I appear to have that set correctly, so that doesn't appear to be a problem. Here's my code, and I've attached my error below. Does anyone have any pointers on how I can get this done?

require(RCurl)
require(gdata)
url <- "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27644144/NADAC%2020140101.xls"
test <- read.xls(url)

The error I'm getting is:

Error in xls2sep(xls, sheet, verbose = verbose, ..., method = method,  : 
Intermediate file 'C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpeoJNxP\file338c26156d7.csv' missing!
In addition: Warning message:
running command '"C:\STRAWB~1\perl\bin\perl.exe" "C:/Users/Me/Documents/R/win-library/3.0/gdata/perl/xls2csv.pl"  "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27644144/NADAC%2020140101.xls" "C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpeoJNxP\file338c26156d7.csv" "1"' had status 22 
Error in file.exists(tfn) : invalid 'file' argument

Answer 1

@G.G is correct that read.xls does not support https. However, if you simply replace the https with http in the url you should be able to download the file.

Give this a try:

require(RCurl)
require(gdata)
url <- "http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27644144/NADAC%2020140101.xls"
test <- read.xls(url)

Answer 2

read.xls supports http and ftp but does not support https. Download it first and then use read.xls with the downloaded file.