R: Download image using rvest

Here's one example to download the R logo into the current directory.

library(rvest)
url <- "https://www.r-project.org"
imgsrc <- read_html(url) %>%
  html_node(xpath = '//*/img') %>%
  html_attr('src')
imgsrc
# [1] "/Rlogo.png"

# side-effect!
download.file(paste0(url, imgsrc), destfile = basename(imgsrc))

EDIT

Since authentication is involved, Austin's suggestion of using a session is certainly required. Try this:

library(rvest)
library(httr)
sess <- html_session(url)
imgsrc <- sess %>%
  read_html() %>%
  html_node(xpath = '//*/img') %>%
  html_attr('src')
img <- jump_to(sess, paste0(url, imgsrc))

# side-effect!
writeBin(img$response$content, basename(imgsrc))

Try this example below:

library(rvest); library(dplyr)

url <- "http://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/new-discoveries-an-alaskan-butterfly-a-spider-physicist-and-more"
webpage <- html_session(url)
link.titles <- webpage %>% html_nodes("img")

img.url <- link.titles[13] %>% html_attr("src")

download.file(img.url, "test.jpg", mode = "wb")

You now have "test.jpg" which is the picture: