08-vcr-usage.Rmd

```{r echo = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  comment = "#>",
  warning = FALSE,
  message = FALSE
)
```

# Advanced vcr usage {#vcr-usage}

Now that we've covered basic `vcr` usage, it's time for some more advanced usage topics.

```{r}
library("vcr")
```

## Mocking writing to disk {#vcr-disk}

If you have http requests for which you write the response to disk, then
use `vcr_configure()` to set the `write_disk_path` option. See more about 
the [write_disk_path configuration option](#write-disk-path).

Here, we create a temporary directory, then set the fixtures

```{r}
tmpdir <- tempdir()
vcr_configure(
  dir = file.path(tmpdir, "fixtures"),
  write_disk_path = file.path(tmpdir, "files")
)
```

Then pass a file path (that doesn't exist yet) to crul's `disk` parameter.
`vcr` will take care of handling writing the response to that file in
addition to the cassette.

```{r}
library(crul)
## make a temp file
f <- tempfile(fileext = ".json")
## make a request
cas <- use_cassette("test_write_to_disk", {
  out <- HttpClient$new("https://httpbin.org/get")$get(disk = f)
})
file.exists(out$content)
out$parse()
```

This also works with `httr`. The only difference is that you write to disk
with a function `httr::write_disk(path)` rather than a parameter.

::: {.alert .alert-dismissible .alert-info}
Writing to disk with `{httr2}` does not yet work with `{vcr}` -- see <https://github.com/ropensci/vcr/issues/270>
:::

Note that when you write to disk when using `vcr`, the cassette is slightly
changed. Instead of holding the http response body itself, the cassette
has the file path with the response body.

```yaml
http_interactions:
- request:
    method: get
    uri: https://httpbin.org/get
  response:
    headers:
      status: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      access-control-allow-credentials: 'true'
    body:
      encoding: UTF-8
      file: yes
      string: /private/var/folders/fc/n7g_vrvn0sx_st0p8lxb3ts40000gn/T/Rtmp5W4olr/files/file177e2e5d97ec.json
```

And the file has the response body that otherwise would have been in the `string`
yaml field above:

```json
{
  "args": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "application/json, text/xml, application/xml, */*", 
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "libcurl/7.54.0 r-curl/4.3 crul/0.9.0"
  }, 
  "origin": "24.21.229.59, 24.21.229.59", 
  "url": "https://httpbin.org/get"
}
```

```{r echo=FALSE}
invisible(vcr_configure_reset())
```