natereed

getCIK = function(ticker) {
  stopifnot(is.character(ticker))
  uri = "http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar"

  response = getForm(uri,CIK=ticker,action="getcompany")
  html = htmlParse(response)
  CIKNode = getNodeSet(html, "//acronym[@title=\"Central Index Key\"][text() = \"CIK\"]")
  CIKNodeText = sapply(CIKNode, function(x) xmlValue(getSibling(getSibling(x))))
  CIK = sub(" .*","",CIKNodeText)
  CIK = sub("^0*","",CIK)