R: Load URL into an HTML Browser

browseURL {utils} | R Documentation

## Load URL into an HTML Browser

### Description

Load a given URL into an HTML browser.

### Usage

    browseURL(url, browser = getOption("browser"),
              encodeIfNeeded = FALSE)

### Arguments

`url` | a non-empty character string giving the URL to be loaded. Some platforms also accept file paths.
`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.

### Details

On Unix-alikes:

  The default browser is set by option `"browser"`, in turn set by the environment variable R_BROWSER which is by default set in file ‘R_HOME/etc/Renviron’ to a choice made manually or automatically when R was configured. (See `Startup` for where to override that default value.) To suppress showing URLs altogether, use the value `"false"`.

  On many platforms it is best to set option `"browser"` to a generic program/script and let that invoke the user's choice of browser. For example, on macOS use `open` and on many other Unix-alikes use `xdg-open`.

  If `browser` supports remote control and R knows how to perform it, the URL is opened in any already-running browser or a new one if necessary. This mechanism currently is available for browsers which support the `"-remote openURL(...)"` interface (which includes Mozilla and Opera), Galeon, KDE konqueror (via kfmclient) and the GNOME interface to Mozilla. (Firefox has dropped support, but defaults to using an already-running browser.) Note that the type of browser is determined from its name, so this mechanism will only be used if the browser is installed under its canonical name.

  Because `"-remote"` will use any browser displaying on the X server (whatever machine it is running on), the remote control mechanism is only used if `DISPLAY` points to the local host. This may not allow displaying more than one URL at a time from a remote host.

  It is the caller's responsibility to encode `url` if necessary (see `URLencode`).

  To suppress showing URLs altogether, set `browser = "false"`.

  The behaviour for arguments `url` which are not URLs is platform-dependent. Some platforms accept absolute file paths; fewer accept relative file paths.

On Windows:

  The default browser is set by option `"browser"`, in turn set by the environment variable R_BROWSER if that is set, otherwise to `NULL`. To suppress showing URLs altogether, use the value `"false"`.

  Some browsers have required `:` be replaced by `|` in file paths: others do not accept that. All seem to accept `\` as a path separator even though the RFC1738 standard requires `/`.

  To suppress showing URLs altogether, set `browser = "false"`.

### URL schemes

Which URL schemes are accepted is platform-specific: expect http://, https:// and ftp:// to work, but mailto: may or may not (and if it does may not use the user's preferred email client).

For the file:// scheme the format accepted (if any) can depend on both browser and OS.

### Examples

    ## Not run:
    ## for KDE users who want to open files in a new tab
    options(browser = "kfmclient newTab")

    browseURL("https://www.r-project.org")

    ## On Windows-only, something like
    browseURL("file://d:/R/R-2.5.1/doc/html/index.html",
              browser = "C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe")

    ## End(Not run)

[Package utils version 4.0.5 Index]