java - Read Excel file into R with XLConnect package from URL

Question

There are lots of good examples out there on how to read Microsoft Excel files into R with the XLConnect package, but I can't find any examples of how to read in an Excel file directly from a URL. The reproducible example below returns a "FileNotFoundException (Java)". But, I know the file exists because I can pull it up directly by pasting the URL into a browser.

fname <- "https://www.misoenergy.org/Library/Repository/Market%20Reports/20140610_sr_nd_is.xls"
sheet <- c("Sheet1")
data  <- readWorksheetFromFile(fname, sheet, header=TRUE, startRow=11, startCol=2, endCol=13)

Although, the URL is prefixed with "https:" it is a public file that does not require a username or password.

I have tried to download the file first using download.file(fname, destfile="test.xls") and got a message that says it was downloaded but when I try to open it in Excel to check to see if it was successful i get a Excel popup box that says "..found unreadable content in 'test.xls'.

Below are the specifics of my system:

Computer: 64-bit Dell running Operating System: Windows 7 Professional R version: R-3.1.0

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Two things:

1. Try using a different package--I know the gdata package's read.xls function has support for URLs

2. Try loading in a publicly-available xls file to make sure it's not an issue with the particular website.

For instance, you can try:

library("gdata")
site <- "http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data/chapt26.xls"
data  <- read.xls(site, header=FALSE, skip=8)
head(data)