source_GitHubData.R

#####################
# R function for downloading plain-text data from GitHub
# Christopher Gandrud
# 7 January 2013
#####################

# source_GitHubData is directly based on source_url from the Hadley Wickham's devtools package

source_GitHubData <-function(url, sep = ",", dec=".", header = TRUE)
{
  require(httr)
  request <- GET(url)
  stop_for_status(request)
  handle <- textConnection(content(request, as = 'text'))
  on.exit(close(handle))
  read.table(handle, sep = sep, dec=dec, header = header)
}