Eurostat forces the use of https

[paulrougieux]

Eurostat now forces the use of https. This breaks the get_eurostat() function.
Changing the value returned by eurostat_url() to the following: "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/" fixes the issue. I suggested a change in a pull request.

[paulrougieux]

A more flexible alternative would be to make this eurostat_url an option.

An option can be set at package start-up, using the .onLoad() function:

options(eurostat_url = "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/")

The option can then be retrieved with:

getOption("eurostat_url")
[1] "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/"

Only 3 files would have to be changed:

• get_eurostat_dic.R:line 23: url <- eurostat_url()
• get_eurostat_raw.R:line 22: base <- eurostat_url()
• set_eurostat_toc.R:line 10: base <- eurostat_url()

In those 3 files, the call to eurostat_url() could be replaced with getOption("eurostat_url").

[antagomir]

I like the latter option ("options"). Could you PR that one?

[jhuovari]

Great! I think we should update to CRAN soon as possible.

Are there any other use cases for option than the eurostat changing the url? Well, this is the second time in a history of the package, if I remember correctly.

[paulrougieux]

Probably no other use case, unless someone decides to make a mirror of the Eurostat data with modified datasets. Could it be a security risk?

Also knitr uses a slightly different mechanism for options. Would that make sense here?

Does the eurostat package need other options? Would it be better to group them under a list?
We could create them and call them with:

eurostat <- list(url = "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/")
options(eurostat = eurostat)
getOption("eurostat")$url
[1] "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/"

It's more complex and may not be neccessary.

[paulrougieux]

Fixed in #124