Connect to the internet

[Colin Gillespie]

Running courses, bugs often arise because a user can't connect to the internet. In particular, they can access only access local sites, e.g. only sites in the *.ncl.ac.uk domain.

Something like: assert_access_website

Perhaps even have an argument to specify a url(s). You would actually use this function in is_current_r()

[Richard Cotton]

Lots of ideas here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5076593/how-to-determine-if-you-have-an-internet-connection-in-r

Trying to retrieve a bit of the webpage, as per, Biobase::testBioCConnection seems a bit pointless, since you might as well just do try(download_stuff(url)), rather than attempting to connect twice.

Solutions using system(ipconfig) or system(ping) may be worth it if they are much faster.