R - Write a HTML file from URL/HTML Object/HTML Response

Question

I want to save a HTML file using a URL from R. I have tried to save the response object(s) after using GET and read_html functions of httr and rvest packages respectively, on the URL of the website, I want to save the HTML of. But that didn't work out to save the actual contents of the website.

url = "https://facebook.com"
get_object = httr::GET(url); save(get_object, "file.html")
html_object = rvest::read_html(url); save(html_object, "file.html")

Neither of these work to save the correct output (i.e, the HTML content of the webpage in a .html file) of the actual website in the HTML file.

The correct output that I am looking for is the HTML content of the webpage in the file.html file I am getting some junk inside the file.html file. — RNoobie
– RNoobie, Commented Jun 8, 2016 at 3:49

cory · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-08 14:22:13Z

9

Use str(object) to figure out what you are working with. In both cases, you were trying to write non-text to a text file.

Here's how to get the text and write it using both of your libraries...

url = "https://facebook.com"

library(httr)
get_object = GET(url)
cat(content(get_object, "text"), file="temp.html")

library(rvest)
html_object = read_html(url)
write_xml(html_object, file="temp.html")

answered Jun 8, 2016 at 14:22

cory

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