bcdc_browse {bcdata}

Load the B.C. Data Catalogue URL into an HTML browser

Description

This is a wrapper around utils::browseURL with the URL for the B.C. Data Catalogue as the default

Usage

bcdc_browse(
  query = NULL,
  browser = getOption("browser"),
  encodeIfNeeded = FALSE
)

Arguments

query

Default (NULL) opens a browser to https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca. This argument will also accept a B.C. Data Catalogue record ID or name to take you directly to that page. If the provided ID or name doesn't lead to a valid webpage, bcdc_browse will search the data catalogue for that string.

browser

a non-empty character string giving the name of the program to be used as the HTML browser. It should be in the PATH, or a full path specified. Alternatively, an R function to be called to invoke the browser.

Under Windows NULL is also allowed (and is the default), and implies that the file association mechanism will be used.

encodeIfNeeded

Should the URL be encoded by URLencode before passing to the browser? This is not needed (and might be harmful) if the browser program/function itself does encoding, and can be harmful for ‘⁠file://⁠’ URLs on some systems and for ‘⁠http://⁠’ URLs passed to some CGI applications. Fortunately, most URLs do not need encoding.

Value

A browser is opened with the B.C. Data Catalogue URL loaded if the session is interactive. The URL used is returned as a character string.

See Also

browseURL

Examples

## Take me to the B.C. Data Catalogue home page
try(
  bcdc_browse()
)

## Take me to the B.C. airports catalogue record
try(
 bcdc_browse("bc-airports")
)

## Take me to the B.C. airports catalogue record
try(
  bcdc_browse("76b1b7a3-2112-4444-857a-afccf7b20da8")
)