r - Send to github via curl command line (Windows)

Question

I asked a related question and realized I wasn't asking the right question (i.e., this isn't about git).

The question is how to push a project to github without first creating the project in the clouds using R. Currently you can do this from the git command line in RStudio using info from this question.

Now I'm trying to make that into R code now from a Windows machine (Linux was easy). I'm stuck at the first step using curl from the command line via an R system call. I'll show what I have and then the error message (Thanks to SimonO101 for getting me this far.). Per his comments below I've edited heavily to reflect the problem as it:

R Code:

repo <- "New"
user <- "trinker"
password <- "password"

url <- "http://curl.askapache.com/download/curl-7.23.1-win64-ssl-sspi.zip"
tmp <- tempfile( fileext = ".zip" )
download.file(url,tmp)
unzip(tmp, exdir = tempdir())

system(paste0(tempdir(), "/curl http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem -o " , 
    tempdir() , "/curl-ca-bundle.crt"))

cmd1 <- paste0(tempdir(), "/curl -u '", user, ":", password, 
    "' https://api.github.com/user/repos -d '{"name":"", repo, ""}'")

system(cmd1)

cmd2 <- paste0(tempdir(), "/curl -k -u '", user, ":", password, 
    "' https://api.github.com/user/repos -d '{"name":"", repo, ""}'")

system(cmd2)

Error Messages (same for both approaches):

> system(cmd1)
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed

  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100    12    0     0  100    12      0     24 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--    30
100    47  100    35  100    12     65     22 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--    83{
  "message": "Bad credentials"
}

I know all the files are there because:

> dir(tempdir())
[1] "curl-ca-bundle.crt"   "curl.exe"             "file1aec62fa980.zip"  "file1aec758c1415.zip"

It can't be my password or user name because this works on Linux Mint (the only difference is the part before curl):

repo <- "New"
user <- "trinker"
password <- "password"


cmd1 <- paste0("curl -u '", user, ":", password, 
    "' https://api.github.com/user/repos -d '{"name":"", repo, ""}'")

system(cmd1)

NOTE: Windows 7 machine. R 2.14.1

Answer 1

EDIT - After OP offered bounty

Ok, it turns out it is to do with some crazy windows character escaping on the command line. Essentially the problem was we were passing improperly formatted json requests to github.

You can use shQuote to properly format the offending portion of the curl request for Windows. We can test platform type to see if we need to include special formatting for Windows cases like so:

repo <- "NewRepository"
json <- paste0(" { "name":"" , repo , "" } ") #string we desire formatting
os <- .Platform$OS.type #check if we are on Windows
if( os == "windows" ){
json <- shQuote(json , type = "cmd" )
cmd1 <- paste0( tempdir() ,"/curl -i -u "" , user , ":" , password , "" https://api.github.com/user/repos -d " , json )
}

This worked on my Windows 7 box without any problems. I can update the GitHub script if you want?

OLD ANSWER

I did some digging around here and here and it might be that the answer to your problem is to update the curl-ca-bundle. It may help on Windows to get R to use the internet2.dll.

repo <- "New"
user <- "trinker"
password <- "password"

url <- "http://curl.askapache.com/download/curl-7.23.1-win64-ssl-sspi.zip"
tmp <- tempfile( fileext = ".zip" )
download.file(url,tmp)
unzip(tmp, exdir = tempdir())
system( paste0( "curl http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem -o " , tempdir() , "/curl-ca-bundle.crt" ) )
system( paste0( tempdir(),"/curl", " -u 'USER:PASS' https://api.github.com/user/repos -d '{"name":"REPO"}'") )

Again, I can't test this as I don't have access to my Windows box, but updating the certificate authority file seems to have helped a few other people. From the curl website, the Windows version of curl should look for the curl-ca-bundle.crt file in the following order:

1. application's directory
2. current working directory
3. Windows System directory (e.g. C:windowssystem32)
4. Windows Directory (e.g. C:windows)
5. all directories along %PATH%