Download GAO Reports in One Step — auto

Convenience wrapper that loads the bundled report links, optionally filters by fiscal year, and downloads reports as PDF, HTML, or both. Use format = "metadata" to export a CSV of report metadata without downloading any files.

Usage

auto_download(
  format = NULL,
  year = NULL,
  download_dir = "gao_reports",
  sleep_time = 1,
  confirm = TRUE
)

Arguments

format: Character. "pdf", "html", "both", or "metadata". "metadata" writes a CSV of report metadata without downloading files. NULL (default) prompts interactively; in non-interactive sessions defaults to "pdf".
year: Integer vector of 4-digit fiscal years, e.g. 2024 or 2020:2024. NULL (default) prompts interactively; in non-interactive sessions uses all available years.
download_dir: Character. Base directory for downloads. pdf/ and/or html/ subdirectories are created beneath it.
sleep_time: Numeric. Seconds to pause between downloads.
confirm: Logical. If TRUE (default), prompts for confirmation before downloading. In non-interactive sessions, confirm = TRUE raises an error to prevent accidental mass downloads — set confirm = FALSE explicitly.

Value

For "pdf", "html", or "both": invisible character vector of downloaded file paths. For "metadata": invisible path to the written CSV.

Details

PDF URLs are constructed directly from report IDs (e.g., /products/gao-24-106198 becomes /assets/gao-24-106198.pdf) rather than scraping each report page, so no extra HTTP requests are needed for link extraction.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Interactive: walks through prompts
auto_download()

# Non-interactive: download 2024 PDFs
auto_download(format = "pdf", year = 2024, confirm = FALSE)

# Export metadata only (no file downloads)
auto_download(format = "metadata", year = 2020:2024, confirm = FALSE)
} # }