getForm - how to send special characters? - r

Question

I have a small script written with Rcurl which connect me to corpus of polish language and ask about target word frequency. However this solution works only with standard characters. If i ask about the word with polish letter (ie. "ę", "ą") its return no match. The output log suggest that the script is not transferring properly polish characters in url adress.
My script:
#slowo = word;
wordCorpusChecker<- function (slowo, korpus=2) {
#this line help me bypass the redirection page after calling for specific word
curl = getCurlHandle(cookiefile = "", verbose = TRUE,
followlocation=TRUE, encoding = "utf-8")
#standard call for submitting html form
getForm("http://korpus.pl/poliqarp/poliqarp.php",
query = slowo, corpus = as.character(korpus), showMatch = "1",
showContext = "3",leftContext = "5", rightContext = "5",
wideContext = "50", hitsPerPage = "10",
.opts = curlOptions(
verbose = T,
followlocation=TRUE,
encoding = "utf-8"
)
, curl = curl)
#In test2 there is html of page where I can find information I'm interested in
test1 <- getURL("http://korpus.pl/poliqarp/poliqarp.php", curl = curl)
test2 <- getURL("http://korpus.pl/poliqarp/poliqarp.php", curl = curl)
#"scrapping" the frequency from html website
a<-regexpr("Found <em>", test2)[1]+
as.integer(attributes(regexpr("Found <em>", test2)))
b<-regexpr("</em> results<br />\n", test2)[1] - 1
c<-a:b
value<-substring(test2, c[1], c[length(c)])
return(value)
}
#if you try this you will get nice result about "pies" (dog) frequency in polish corpus
wordCorpusChecker("pies")
#if you try this you will get no match because of the special characters
wordCorpusChecker("kałuża")
#the log from `verbose`:
GET /poliqarp/poliqarp.php?query=ka%B3u%BFa&corpus=2&showMatch=1&showContext=3&leftContext=5&rightContext=5&wideContext=50&hitsPerPage=10
I've tried to specify encoding option but as manual says it's refers to the result of a query. I'm experimenting with curlUnescape but with no positive results. Kindly asking for advice.

Answer 1

One solution is to specify the utf coding for example
> "ka\u0142u\u017Ca"
[1] "kałuża"
wordCorpusChecker("ka\u0142u\u017Ca")
[1] "55"