downloader

0.4.1

Download Files over HTTP and HTTPS

18packages depend

331.6Kdownloads / year

50.9%test coverage

13/13checks pass

Overview

About

Maintained by Winston ChangFirst published 2012-11-017 releasesCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗

Provides a wrapper for the download.file function, making it possible to download files over HTTPS on Windows, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like platforms. The 'RCurl' package provides this functionality (and much more) but can be difficult to install because it must be compiled with external dependencies. This package has no external dependencies, so it is much easier to install.

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("downloader", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("wch/downloader")

Development version from wch/downloader. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-downloader

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-downloader

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed).

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

Slowest check: 46 s · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Code health

Yes

Tests · ratio 0.45

50.9%

Coverage · measured lines

100%

Documentation · exports

Dependencies · direct

Check history

OK2026-03-10
14 OK · 0 NOTE · 0 WARNING · 0 ERROR · 0 FAILURE

Documentation

READMEYes · 77 wordsVignettesNopkgdown siteNoNEWSYes · 100% structuredCode of conductNoContributing guideNo

Examples that run: 0%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 0%
References docs: 0%

Downloads

331.6K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #695 · ~908/day · ~27.6K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

23.8K30 days

82.5K90 days

331.6K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on1.8K r2u131 autocran38.1K conda_forge72 bioconda63 c2d4u

Repository

GitHub ↗ wch/downloader

35Stars

8Forks

3Open issues

0Open PRs

0Releases

63Commits

3Contributors

63 commits · Last activity 2025-03-26

Repository practices

Upstream repositoryBeta

1 development-tooling and community-health practice detected across 1 family in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/wch/downloader on 2026-07-26.

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v1 (2026-07-18)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

2 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Depends (0)

none

Imports (2)

utilsdigest

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (1)

testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

18direct

42indirect

DEET biomartr etl fishualize imager imgpalr materialmodifier mdsr neonUtilities pkgfilecache rfars rtrek scMappR sketcher stationaRy AplosNCA drake quantmod

Code & Tests

People & History

People (1)

Maintainer (1)

Winston Chang

Author, Maintainer

Authors (1)

Winston Chang

Author, Maintainer

Package Timeline

7 releases. Pick two to compare their code metrics. R releases are shown for context.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
0.4.1Latest
2025-03-26 · current release · diff ↗
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
0.4
2015-07-09 · diff ↗
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
R
R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10
0.3
2013-05-01 · diff ↗

Show 6 earlier events

R
R 3.0.0 released · 2013-04-03
0.2.2
2013-02-11 · diff ↗
0.2.1
2013-02-05 · diff ↗
0.2
2013-02-04 · diff ↗
0.1
2012-11-01
R
R 2.15.0 released · 2012-03-30

Package metadata

First published: 2012-11-01
Total releases: 7 / 14 yrs
License: GPL-2 OSI
Download size: 6.8 KB
Installed size: not tracked yet
With dependencies: not tracked yet

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