R function to retrieve FRED series as xts object

fred.R

## 
## The quantmod function, getSymbols.FRED(), has been broken by the recent upgrade to FRED to https only.
## I've taken that function and tweaked it to work.
##
fred <- function (Symbols, env, return.class = "xts", ...) 
{
    importDefaults("getSymbols.FRED")
    this.env <- environment()
    for (var in names(list(...))) {
        assign(var, list(...)[[var]], this.env)
    }
    if (!hasArg(verbose)) 
        verbose <- FALSE
    if (!hasArg(auto.assign)) 
        auto.assign <- TRUE
    FRED.URL <- "https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series"
    for (i in 1:length(Symbols)) {
        if (verbose) 
            cat("downloading ", Symbols[[i]], ".....\n\n")
        tmp <- tempfile()
        download.file(paste(FRED.URL, "/", Symbols[[i]], "/", 
            "downloaddata/", Symbols[[i]], ".csv", sep = ""), method='curl', 
            destfile = tmp, quiet = !verbose)
        fr <- read.csv(tmp, na.string = ".")
        unlink(tmp)
        if (verbose) 
            cat("done.\n")
        fr <- xts(as.matrix(fr[, -1]), as.Date(fr[, 1], origin = "1970-01-01"), 
            src = "FRED", updated = Sys.time())
        dim(fr) <- c(NROW(fr), 1)
        colnames(fr) <- as.character(toupper(Symbols[[i]]))
        fr <- quantmod:::convert.time.series(fr = fr, return.class = return.class)
        Symbols[[i]] <- toupper(gsub("\\^", "", Symbols[[i]]))
        if (auto.assign) 
            assign(Symbols[[i]], fr, env)
    }
    if (auto.assign) 
        return(Symbols)
    return(fr)
}