Certificate problem with shiny?

[Ajackson]

I have a shiny app. It runs just fine locally, but when deployed it fails.

Here is the latest log:

2021-10-20T00:45:59.707151+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]:
2021-10-20T00:45:59.708284+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: [1] "--1--"
2021-10-20T00:45:59.995999+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Calls: local ... tryCatch -> tryCatchList -> tryCatchOne ->
2021-10-20T00:45:59.996000+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Execution halted
2021-10-20T00:45:59.995997+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Error in value[3L] : embedded nul in string: '180\0\0\0\b1'
2021-10-20T00:45:59.996050+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Shiny application exiting ...

---

A previous attempt gave this log:
2021-10-20T00:09:25.934513+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Attaching package: ‘DT’
2021-10-20T00:09:26.076858+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Warning in readRDS(gzcon(url(paste0(DataLocation, "MasterPermits.rds")))) :
2021-10-20T00:09:25.934823+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: The following objects are masked from ‘package:shiny’:
2021-10-20T00:09:26.076860+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: URL 'https://www.ajackson.org/Permits/data/MasterPermits.rds': status was 'Peer certificate cannot be authenticated with given CA certificates'
2021-10-20T00:09:26.192942+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Error in value[3L] :
2021-10-20T00:09:26.192943+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: cannot open the connection to 'https://www.ajackson.org/Permits/data/MasterPermits.rds'
2021-10-20T00:09:26.192944+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Calls: local ... tryCatch -> tryCatchList -> tryCatchOne ->
2021-10-20T00:09:26.192971+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Shiny application exiting ...
2021-10-20T00:09:26.192957+00:00 shinyapps[1624184]: Execution halted

I have a different shiny app that works just fine on the server, accessing the same domain, and it gets no error at all. Since I can run the code locally, the input files must be fine, so I am completely mystified.

Here is some code:

#   This code works on the server
DataLocation <- "https://www.ajackson.org/Covid/"
DataArchive <- "https://www.ajackson.org/SharedData/"

z <- gzcon(url(paste0(DataLocation, "Today_County_Animate.rds")))
county_animate <- readRDS(z)
close(z)

# This code fails with the cert error
DataLocation <- "https://www.ajackson.org/Permits/data/"

DF <- readRDS(gzcon(url(paste0(DataLocation, "MasterPermits.rds"))))

# This code fails with the null error
DataLocation <- "https://www.ajackson.org/Permits/data/"

print("--1--")
z <- gzcon(url(paste0(DataLocation, "MasterPermits.rds")))
DF <- readRDS(z)
close(z)

print("--2--")

[jimbomahoney]

EDIT - seems this is the problem for me.

[Ajackson]

Scott Jackson (of Rstudio) hit upon the solution.

Wherever the url function is called, add the option method="libcurl" to the call. That seems to have fixed the issue.