download.file() in R has non zero exit status

Question

I am trying to download a file in R 3.0.1 (Windows 7):

    fileUrl <- "https://data.baltimorecity.gov/api/views/dz54-2aru/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD"
    download.file(fileUrl, destfile="./data/cameras.csv", method="curl")

I checked both the url and my internet connection and they seem to be working just fine. However, I get this message:

    Warning message:  
    In download.file(fileUrl, destfile = "./data/cameras.csv", method = "curl") : 
    download had nonzero exit status

Can't find any help online, anybody knows how to fix this?

Answer 1

The answer by @dickoa probably works, but I think the major issue is that you are using https unnecessarily. I think this works:

# Note the http instead of https
file<-'http://data.baltimorecity.gov/api/views/dz54-2aru/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD'
read.csv(file)

Answer 2

Still don't understand why removing method = "curl" don't solve the problem.

Another solution is install the downloader package which wrap download.file and make the download process easier and cross-platform (one function with same paramters for all OS)

install.packages("downloader")
fileUrl <- "https://data.baltimorecity.gov/api/views/dz54-2aru
            /rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD"

require(downloader)
download(fileUrl, "data/cameras.csv", mode = "wb")

Hope that it will work this time