Hi Steve RCurl can help you when you need to have more control over Web requests. The details vary from Web site to Web site and the different ways to specify passwords, etc.
If the JSESSIONID and NCES_JSESSIONID are regular cookies and returned in the first request as cookies, then you can just have RCurl handle the cookies But the basics for your case are library(RCurl) h = getCurlHandle( cookiefile = "") Then make your Web request using getURLContent(), getForm() or postForm() but making certain to pass the curl handle stored in h in each call, e.g. ans = getForm(yourURL, login = "bob", password = "jane", curl = h) txt = getURLContent(dataURL, curl = h) If JSESSIONID and NCES_JSESSIONID are not returned as cookies but HTTP header fields, then you need to process the header. Something like rdr = dynCurlReader(h) ans = getForm(yourURL, login = "bob", password = "jane", curl = h, header = rdr$update) Then the header from the HTTP response is available as rdr$header() and you can use parseHTTPHeader(rdr$header()) to convert it into a named vector. HTH, D. On 6/24/11 2:12 PM, Steven R Corsi wrote: > I am trying to retrieve data from a password protected database. I have login > information and the proper url. When I > make a request to the url, I get back some info, but need to read the "hidden > header" information that has JSESSIONID > and NCES_JSESSIONID. They need to be used to set cookies before sending off > the actual url request that will result in > the data transfer. Any help would be much appreciated. > Thanks > Steve > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.