Downloading kaggle files in R without getting the 'Permission denied' error

Question

I am trying to download Kaggle data files directly in R:

download.file("http://www.kaggle.com/c/walmart-recruiting-store-sales-forecasting/download/train.csv.zip", "/train.csv.zip")
Error in download.file("http://www.kaggle.com/c/walmart-recruiting-store-sales-forecasting/download/train.csv.zip",  : 
  cannot open destfile '/train.csv.zip', reason 'Permission denied'

Any known walk arounds?

Answer 1

Your destfile is incorrect. destfile is the destination for the downloaded file (on your computer). I usually use a tempfile to create a temporary file as a destination for the download, and then unlink it later.

tmp <- tempfile()
url <- "http://www.kaggle.com/c/walmart-recruiting-store-sales-forecasting/download/train.csv.zip"
download.file(url, destfile = tmp)

Then check list.files('tmp') (depending on where tmp is on your computer), unzip it, read it, and use unlink(tmp) to dump it once you've read it into R.