handle function

Create a handle tied to a particular host.

This handle preserves settings and cookies across multiple requests. It is the foundation of all requests performed through the httr package, although it will mostly be hidden from the user.

handle(url, cookies = TRUE)

Arguments

• url: full url to site
• cookies: DEPRECATED

Note

Because of the way argument dispatch works in R, using handle() in the http methods (See GET()) will cause problems when trying to pass configuration arguments (See examples below). Directly specifying the handle when using http methods is not recommended in general, since the selection of the correct handle is taken care of when the user passes an url (See handle_pool()).

Examples

handle("http://google.com")
handle("https://google.com")

h <- handle("http://google.com")
GET(handle = h)
# Should see cookies sent back to server
GET(handle = h, config = verbose())

h <- handle("http://google.com", cookies = FALSE)
GET(handle = h)$cookies
## Not run:

# Using the preferred way of configuring the http methods
# will not work when using handle():
GET(handle = h, timeout(10))
# Passing named arguments will work properly:
GET(handle = h, config = list(timeout(10), add_headers(Accept = "")))
## End(Not run)