R help - Mar 2010 - Do colClasses in readHTMLTable (XML Package) work?

Hi,

I can't get the colClasses option to work in the readHTMLTable function 
of the XML package. Here's a code fragment:

    require("XML")
    doc <- "http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html"
    table <- getNodeSet(htmlParse(doc),"//table") [[2]]        #
The
    main table is the second one because it's embedded in the page table.
    xt <- readHTMLTable(
             table,
             header    
c("peak","trough","contraction","expansion","trough2trough","peak2peak"),
             colClasses    
c("character","character","character","character","character","character"),
             trim = TRUE
             )

Does anyone know what's wrong?

     Marsh Feldman

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On 3/17/10 6:52 PM, Marshall Feldman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I can't get the colClasses option to work in the readHTMLTable function
> of the XML package. Here's a code fragment:
> 
>     require("XML")
>     doc <- "http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html"
>     table <- getNodeSet(htmlParse(doc),"//table") [[2]]       
# The
>     main table is the second one because it's embedded in the page
table.
>     xt <- readHTMLTable(
>              table,
>              header >    
c("peak","trough","contraction","expansion","trough2trough","peak2peak"),
>              colClasses >    
c("character","character","character","character","character","character"),
>              trim = TRUE
>              )
> 
> Does anyone know what's wrong?
The coercion of the table columns is done before the call to
as.data.frame. You can add

  stringsAsFactors = FALSE

in the call to readHTMLTable() and you'll get what you expect,
I believe.

   D.
> 
>      Marsh Feldman
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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