Learn R Programming

usethis (version 1.5.0)

use_course_details: Download and unpack a ZIP file

Description

Details on the two functions that power use_course(). These internal functions are currently unexported but a course instructor may want more details.

Arguments

url

Download link for the ZIP file, possibly behind a shortlink or other redirect. See Details.

destdir

Path to existing local directory where the ZIP file will be stored. Defaults to current working directory, but note that use_course() has different default behavior.

pedantic

Logical. When TRUE and in an interactive session, the user is told where the ZIP file will be stored. If happy, user can elect to proceed. Otherwise, user can abort and try again with the desired destdir. Intentional friction for a pedagogical setting.

zipfile

Path to local ZIP file.

download_zip()

## function signature
download_zip(url, destdir = getwd(), pedantic = FALSE)

## as called inside use_course() download_zip( url, ## after post-processing with normalize_url() ## conspicuous_place() = Desktop or home directory or working directory destdir = destdir %||% conspicuous_place(), pedantic = is.null(destdir) && interactive() )

Special-purpose function to download a ZIP file and automatically determine the file name, which often determines the folder name after unpacking. Developed with DropBox and GitHub as primary targets, possibly via shortlinks. Both platforms offer a way to download an entire folder or repo as a ZIP file, with information about the original folder or repo transmitted in the Content-Disposition header. In the absence of this header, a filename is generated from the input URL. In either case, the filename is sanitized. Returns the path to downloaded ZIP file, invisibly.

DropBox:

To make a folder available for ZIP download, create a shared link for it:

A shared link will have this form:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/12345abcde/6789wxyz?dl=0

Replace the dl=0 at the end with dl=1 to create a download link. The ZIP download link will have this form:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/12345abcde/6789wxyz?dl=1

This download link (or a shortlink that points to it) is suitable as input for download_zip(). After one or more redirections, this link will eventually lead to a download URL. For more details, see https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/force-download and https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/desktop-web/download-entire-folders.

GitHub:

Click on the repo's "Clone or download" button, to reveal a "Download ZIP" button. Capture this URL, which will have this form:

https://github.com/r-lib/usethis/archive/master.zip

This download link (or a shortlink that points to it) is suitable as input for download_zip(). After one or more redirections, this link will eventually lead to a download URL. Here's an alternative link that also leads to ZIP download, albeit with a different filenaming scheme:

https://api.github.com/repos/r-lib/usethis/zipball/master

tidy_unzip()

Special-purpose function to unpack a ZIP file and (attempt to) create the directory structure most people want. When unpacking an archive, it is easy to get one more or one less level of nesting than you expected.

It's especially important to finesse the directory structure here: we want the same local result when unzipping the same content from either GitHub or DropBox ZIP files, which pack things differently. Here is the intent:

  • If the ZIP archive foo.zip does not contain a single top-level directory, i.e. it is packed as "loose parts", unzip into a directory named foo. Typical of DropBox ZIP files.

  • If the ZIP archive foo.zip has a single top-level directory (which, by the way, is not necessarily called "foo"), unpack into said directory. Typical of GitHub ZIP files.

Returns path to the directory holding the unpacked files, invisibly.

DropBox: The ZIP files produced by DropBox are special. The file list tends to contain a spurious directory "/", which we ignore during unzip. Also, if the directory is a Git repo and/or RStudio Project, we unzip-ignore various hidden files, such as .RData, .Rhistory, and those below .git/ and .Rproj.user.

See Also

Other download functions: use_course

Examples

Run this code
# NOT RUN {
download_zip("https://github.com/r-lib/rematch2/archive/master.zip")
# }
# NOT RUN {
# }
# NOT RUN {
download_zip("https://github.com/r-lib/rematch2/archive/master.zip")
tidy_unzip("rematch2-master.zip")
# }

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