r - How do I prevent exposure of my password when using RGoogleDocs?

Question

I love RGoogleDocs and use it a lot. However, I don't like entering my password all the time. Obviously I could just type the password into the R script and would never have to enter it again. But thats not viable since it means that my password would be left unencrypted on my harddrive. Furthermore I share my scripts with colleagues.

To get around the problem I came up with this.

if(exists("ps")){
  print("got password, keep going")
} else {
  ps <-readline(prompt="get the password in ")
}

options(RCurlOptions = list(
  capath = system.file("CurlSSL", "cacert.pem", 
  package = "RCurl"), ssl.verifypeer = FALSE)
)

sheets.con = getGoogleDocsConnection(
  getGoogleAuth("[email protected]", ps, service ="wise")) 

#WARNING: this would prevent curl from detecting a 'man in the middle' attack
ts2=getWorksheets("hpv type",sheets.con)

I love using RStudio. I feel uncomfortable that it is displaying my password for any colleague in my office at the time to see. I used a fake password but look at the image. . Furthermore, if I saved a workspace my password would be saved with it and I am afraid that I would be giving it to someone else if, a few months later, when I had long forgotten about what was in it, I sent my .RData file to a colleague.

I read something general about passwords in R in an earlier post. It did not give me enough information to be able to conceal my password when using RGoogleDocs.

Answer 1

My approach is to set the login-name & password in the R options list within the R startup file .Rprofile. Then my code gets the value with getOption() and then the value is never visible or stored in a top-level variable in globalenv(). (It could be save if one does post-mortem debugging via dump.frames).

It is vital that the .Rprofile cannot be read by anybody other than you.

So

options(GoogleDocsPassword = c(login = 'password'))

in the .Rprofile and then

auth = getGoogleAuth()

just works as the default value for the first parameter is to look for the GoogleDocsPassword option.

D.