How to open Excel 2007 File from Password Protected Sharepoint 2007 site in R using RODBC or RCurl? - r

Question

I am interested in opening an Excel 2007 file in R 2.11.1 using RODBC. The Excel file resides in the shared documents page of a MOSS2007 website. I currently download the .xlsx file to my hard drive and then import to R using the following code:
library(RODBC)
con<-odbcConnectExcel2007("C:/file location/file.xlsx")
data<-sqlFetch(con, "worksheet name")
close(con)
When I type in the web url for the document into the odbcConnectExcel2007 connection, an error message pops up with:
ODBC Excel Driver Login Failed: Invalid internet Address.
followed by the following message in my R console:
ERROR: Could not SQLDriverConnect
Any insights you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
**UPDATE**
The site I am attempting to download from is password protected. I tried another method using the method 'getUrl' in the package RCurl:
x = getURL("http://website.com/file.xlsx", userpwd = "uname:pw")
The error that I receive is:
Error in curlPerform(curl = curl, .opts = opts, .encoding = .encoding) :
embedded nul in string: 'PK\003\004\024\0\006\0\b\0\0\0!\0dA»ï\001\0\0O\n\0\0\023\0Ò\001[Content_Types].xml ¢Î\001( \0\002\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\
I have no idea what this means. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Two solutions worked for me.
If you do not need to automate the script that pulls the data, you can map a network drive pointing to the sharepoint folder from which you want to extract the Excel document.
If you need to automate a script to pull the Excel file every couple of minutes, I recommend sending your authentication credentials in a request that automatically saves the file to a local drive. From there you can read it into R for further data wrangling.
library("httr")
library("openxlsx")
user <- <USERNAME>
password <- <PASSWORD>
url <- "https://sharepoint.company/file_to_obtain.xlsx"
httr::GET(url,
authenticate(user, password, type="ntlm"),
write_disk("C:/tempfile.xlsx", overwrite = TRUE))
df <- openxlsx::read.xlsx("C:/tempfile.xlsx")
You can obtain the correct URL to the file by clicking on the sharepoint location and removing "?Web=1" after the file ending (xlsx, xlsb, xls,...). USERNAME and PASSWORD are usually windows credentials. It helps storing them in a key manager (such as:
library("keyring")
keyring::key_set_with_value(service = "Windows", username = "Key", password = <PASSWORD>)
and then authenticating via
authenticate(user, kreyring::key_get("Windows", "Key"), type="ntlm")
in some instances it may be sufficient to pass
authenticate(":", ":", type="ntlm")
if only your Windows credentials are required and the code is running from your machine.