Error in open.connection(x, "rb") : Couldn't connect to server

Question

I receive the following error when attempting to use the rvest package in R:

Error in open.connection(x, "rb") : Couldn't connect to server

What is causing this error message? The function is shown below:

htmlpage <- read_html("http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.27925753000045&lon=-71.41616624299962#.V17UH-IrKHs")

having the same problem too. In what kind of computer are you running the code? — Gere Caste, Jan 17 '17 at 10:04

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 13 '19 at 14:20

9

I tried different ways and the problem was not in the proxy connection, but in the way that R gets the connection. Through the definition of a binary connection of the url within url() the problem was solved.

con <- url("http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490017/", "rb") 
lego_movie <- read_html(con)

edited Mar 13 '19 at 14:20

OTStats

1,820
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answered Sep 18 '17 at 15:56

Tom Meallant

91
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works for me after trying other methods.. like using httr::GET with proxy etc but those didnt work. – Mahaveer Jain Jun 14 '20 at 18:00

Trator · Answer 2 · 2016-09-26T09:23:14.847

1

You have to open a session and then read from it

htmlpage <- html_session("http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=42.27925753000045&lon=-71.41616624299962#.V17UH-IrKHs", httr::user_agent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.20 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/11.0.672.2 Safari/534.20"))

htmlpage %>%
  read_html() %>%
  html_text()

edited Sep 26 '16 at 09:23

answered Sep 26 '16 at 09:11

Trator

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i originally was getting this error when I was on my HP ZBook work computer while in the office. when i connected my work computer to a hotspot, the issue went away. similarly, when i used my personal HP at home, i did not receive the same error. i am thinking the issue was caused by security settings at my company office. – N. Shep Jan 18 '17 at 17:56

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 06 '17 at 18:49

The problem is that your work computer is always looking for your company's proxy server, and this happens whether or not you are at work, or using a hotspot, or even at home.

The easiest way to overcome this is to add a parameter atWork to your function and then use the httr::use_proxy() function to set the appropriate proxy to use:

myFunction <- function(arg1, atWork)

    if(atWork){
        proxy.string <- use_proxy("http://proxy-server.YourCompanyName.com", port = 8080)
    } else {
        proxy.string <- use_proxy("")
    }

# then open a session
sess <- html_session(myUrl, proxy.string)

do stuff here
return(result)
}

of course, you will need to replace proxy-server.YourCompanyName with your actual company's proxy server url.

Error in open.connection(x, "rb") : Couldn't connect to server

3 Answers3

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