getErrorDescription function

Extract an error message from an http response.

Http requests can fail for a variety of reasons, so getErrorDescription first tries to determine what type of response was sent.

getErrorDescription(response)

Arguments

• response: The httr response object to extract the error description from.

Details

The return types handled by this function are: o An incorrect url is sent to DataONE and an error is returned by the web server, not a specified DataONE service url. In this case, a generic error message may be returned, e.g. status=404, URL not found o A DataONE service was called, and returned an error message. In this case the DataONE response is parsed in an attempt to retrieve a meaningful error message.