Can the httr package make HTTPS calls?

Question

Code that previously worked now throws an error due to the server requesting HTTPS calls and no longer accepts HTTP.

Can this code me modified to work? Or is a new process required for encrypted HTTPS?

Thank you!

# Connecting to EIA API

# install.packages(c("httr", "jsonlite"))

library(httr)
library(jsonlite)

key <- "e77e9bd3c8bc84927fad13088f4bff28"

padd_key <- list('PET.MCRRIP12.M','PET.MCRRIP22.M',
                 'PET.MCRRIP32.M','PET.MCRRIP42.M',
                 'PET.MCRRIP52.M')
startdate <- "2010-01-01" #YYYY-MM-DD
enddate <- "2022-02-13" #YYYY-MM-DD

j = 0
for (i in padd_key) {
  
  url <- paste('http://api.eia.gov/series/?api_key=',key,'&series_id=',i,sep="")
  
  res <- GET(url)
  
  json_data <- fromJSON(rawToChar(res$content))
  data <- data.frame(json_data$series$data)
  data$Year <- substr(data$X1,1,4)
  data$Month <- substr(data$X1,5,6)
  data$Day <- 1
  
  data$Date <- as.Date(paste(data$Year, data$Month, data$Day, sep='-'))
  colnames(data)[2]  <- json_data$series$name
  data <- data[-c(1,3,4,5)]
  
  if (j == 0){
    data_final <- data
  }
  else{
    data_final <- merge(data_final,data,by="Date")
  }
  
  j = j + 1
}

data_final <- subset(data_final, Date >= startdate & Date <= enddate)

Answer 1

Yes, it can - you just use https in the URL.

The shortest demonstration I could think of is:

httr::GET("https://httpbin.org/get")

In your code you just need to change the line where you define the url variable:

url <- paste('https://api.eia.gov/series/?api_key=',key,'&series_id=',i,sep="")