Dear R Helpers, I am getting an error message from the try function that I don't understand so I am hoping that someone can help.
I am scraping from web pages, but sometimes they disappear. When that happens I need to control for it with some sort of function. This web page is parsed without a problem. exh<-"NASDAQ" tic<-"EGHT" URL<-paste("http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&btn=istart_date&mode=quarterly_reports&symbol=", exh,"%3A",tic,"&istart_date=0", sep = "") doc <- htmlParse(URL) However, when I change the value of tic it will not. tic<-"AACOU" URL<-paste("http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&btn=istart_date&mode=quarterly_reports&symbol=", exh,"%3A",tic,"&istart_date=0", sep = "") doc <- htmlParse(URL) Error in htmlParse(URL) : error in creating parser for http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&btn=istart_date&mode=quarterly_reports&symbol=NASDAQ0X1.CP-1072AACOU&istart_date=0 I tried to account for this using the try function but I get the error below that I don't understand. options(error = expression(NULL)) URL<-paste("http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&btn=istart_date&mode=quarterly_reports&symbol=", exh,"%3A",tic,"&istart_date=0", sep = "") if( !is( try( doc <- htmlParse(URL) ,"try-error") ) ) { qtrstop <- xpathApply(doc, "count(//select/option)")-5 } Error in !silent : invalid argument type Any help would be most appreciated. --John Sparks ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.