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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

vcr 2.0.0

CRAN release: 2025-07-23

BREAKING CHANGES

  • vcr_last_error() has been removed (#488).
  • vcr_log_file() and vcr_log_info() have been removed.
  • The verbose_errors errors options is no longer supported.
  • clean_outdated_http_interactions has been removed; now all you need to do is set re_record_interval.
  • check_cassette_names() has been deprecated since it can’t be implemented 100% correctly and diagnoses a relatively rare problem (#166).
  • RequestHandler and its subclasses are no longer exported.
  • Internal real_http_connections_allowed() is no longer exported and has been removed. (#409)
  • Internal Request and VcrResponse classes are no longer exported and have been removed.
  • HTTPInteractionList is no longer exported; it’s an internal implementation detail.
  • The uri_parser option is no longer supported.
  • vcr_configuration(allow_http_connections_when_no_cassette) is no longer supported. It hasn’t worked for a while.
  • vcr_configuration(quiet = FALSE) is no longer supported. If you need more information about what’s happening, turn on logging.
  • str_splitter() has been removed; it was accidentally exported as it’s not part of the core vcrs API.
  • cassettes() are now a stack. The most important consequence of this is that eject_cassette() can only remove the most recently inserted cassette.
  • as.cassette() has been removed. It’s not used, and not needed anymore.
  • cassettes() no longer has on_disk or verb arguments and now only ever lists currently active cassettes.

NEW FEATURES

  • The default request matcher now uses method, uri, and body if present.
  • New function local_cassette() to create a local cassette that is used for the current function scope and ejected on exit - this is now the suggested way to use vcr in tests.
  • New functions vcr_configure_log() and local_vcr_configure_log() to configure logging; the former sets logging for the R session, while the latter sets logging for the current function scope.
  • local_casette() and use_cassette() set env vars VCR_IS_RECORDING and VCR_IS_REPLAYING and provide helpers is_recording() and is_replaying(). (#520)
  • New current_cassette_recording() and current_cassette_replaying() tell you if the current cassette is recording or replaying (or neither or both). (#505)
  • New vcr_last_request() and vcr_last_response() to get last request and response respectively (#488).
  • The vignettes have been updated for all the new changes and generally polished.
  • New insert_example_cassette() makes it easier to use vcr in examples (#309).
  • New setup_knitr() makes it easier to use vcr from within a vignette (#308).
  • The Authorization header is never written to disk. (#450)
  • The request body and headers are only written to disk if actually used for matching (#417).
  • Writing files to disk now works with out any additional config. Files are saved in a directory called {cassette-name}-files inside of the cassette directory. You can override this default with vrc_configure(write_disk_path).
  • New body_json request matcher that compares the parsed JSON. This both ignores differences in the textual representation of the JSON and gives more informative messages when requests don’t match. (#421)
  • Raw bodies are now automatically gzipped before being converted to base64 (#343).
  • The default path is now tests/testthat/_vcr. This should not affect existing packages that used use_vcr() because these set up a helper that sets the default directory with vcr_configure() (#395).
  • New function local_vcr_configure() allows you to temporarily affect vcr configuration. (#285)
  • New serializer option qs2, using the qs2 package, generating compressed binary cassette files that are smaller than YAML or JSON files. compressed will have the greatest proportional disk space savings as cassettes have more data in them. (#396)

vcr 1.7.0

CRAN release: 2025-03-10

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • Change maintainer email address (#274)

vcr 1.6.0

CRAN release: 2024-07-23

NEW FEATURES

  • vcr now supports httr2 in addition to httr and crul. (#237) (#268)
  • vcr now supports async http requests with crul (w/ crul v1.5 or greater). no change was required in vcr for this to happen. a PR was merged in crul to hook into vcr. there’s no support for async in httr as that package does not do any async and no support in httr2 because req_perform_parallel does not have a mocking hook as does req_perform (#246)

BUG FIXES

  • Ports in URLs (e.g., 8000) were being accidentally stripped. Fixed now (#264) (#266)

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • Add link to DESCRIPTION file for packge documentation. thanks @olivroy (#265)
  • Use _PACKAGE syntax for package level doc (#263)
  • Improvements to the cassette editing vignette (#262) thanks @adamhsparks

vcr 1.2.2

CRAN release: 2023-06-25

  • change tests to use more reliable test servers

vcr 1.2.0

CRAN release: 2022-11-17

NEW FEATURES

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • use_vcr() now creates a test helper file called helper-vcr.R instead of setup-pkgname.R. We are reverting the change from version 0.6.0 and now recommend the use of helper-*.R again, so that the vcr setup is loaded with devtools::load_all(). That way your vcr-enabled tests also work when run interactively (#244) (#256)
  • default git branch changed from master to main (#253)
  • update example packages in the README (#257)
  • vcr no longer requires compilation because replaced the single C++ function with a pure R equivalent

BUG FIXES

  • roll back a change from the previous CRAN version that removed use of an internal function (body_from) (#249) (#252)

vcr 1.1.0

CRAN release: 2022-11-04

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • request matching was sensitive to escaping special characters, that’s been fixed (#240) (#247) thanks to @KevCaz
  • fix broken link given in error suggestion (#239) thanks to @maelle
  • using preserve_exact_body_bytes = TRUE now writes a base64 encoded string into a field in yaml or json on disk called base64_string. When preserve_exact_body_bytes = FALSE (the default) the response body goes into a field called string

BUG FIXES

  • vcr_test_path fix to find root package path correctly with R 4.2 on Windows (#242) (#243) thanks to @dpprdan

vcr 1.0.2

CRAN release: 2021-05-31

BUG FIXES

vcr 1.0.0

CRAN release: 2021-05-22

NEW FEATURES

  • check_cassette_names() gains allowed_duplicates parameter to allow duplicate cassette names; we typically advise users not to use duplicate cassette names, but there are cases where you may want to share cassettes across tests (#227)
  • vcr_configure() gains filter_query_parameters parameter for filtering out query parameters so they don’t show up in the recorded request on disk (#212)
  • use_vcr(): now sets a mimimum vcr version, which is usually the latest (stable) version on CRAN. You can of course easily remove or change the version requirement yourself after running it (#214)
  • vcr_configure() gains warn_on_empty_cassette parameter: Should a warning be thrown when an empty cassette is detected? Empty cassettes are cleaned up (deleted) either way (#224) thanks @llrs and @dpprdan
  • vcr_configure() gains quiet parameter: suppress any messages from both vcr and webmockr (#226) (#25)
  • vcr_configure() gains new option filter_sensitive_data_regex; now filter_sensitive_data is for fixed string matching, while filter_sensitive_data_regex is for regex based matching (#222) thanks @tomsing1 for reporting
  • gains package import rprojroot

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • filter_sensitive_data option now strips leading and trailing single and double quotes from strings before being used IN CASE a user accidentally quotes a secret - logic being that even though a secret may have a single or double quote in it, its very unlikely that it would have both a leading and trailing quote (single or double) (#221)

DOCUMENTATION

  • new vignette explaining the design of the vcr package (also can be found in the HTTP Testing book) (#232) (#233)
  • no user facing change - but vignettes moved into man/rmdhunks so that they can be pulled into the HTTP Testing book easily (#209) (#216)
  • fix in configuration vignette to clarify a filter_request_headers example (#215) thanks @maelle
  • docs update (#33) (#217)

BUG FIXES

  • filter_request_headers was unfortunately adding a request header to the request written to disk when the header did not exist; now fixed (#213)
  • bug in internal function is_base64(); strsplit() needed useBytes=TRUE (#219)
  • filter_sensitive_data was not working when strings contained regex characters; fixed, and see also above new config variable for regex specific filtering (#222) thanks @tomsing1 for reporting
  • vcr_test_path() should now correctly set paths (#225) (#228) (#229) (#230)

vcr 0.6.0

CRAN release: 2020-12-12

NEW FEATURES

  • We have a new vcr contributor! @maelle (#198)
  • Gains a new serializer: JSON. You can use this serializer by setting globally vcr_configure(serialize_with="json") or per cassette use_cassette(..., serialize_with="json"). The JSON serializer uses jsonlite under the hood. Note that we by default do not write JSON to disk preserving newlines; that is the JSON is all on one line. You can use pretty printing by setting json_pretty in vcr_configure(). As part of this change, factored out new R6 class Serializer from which both JSON and YAML serializers inherit (#32)
  • Gains two new configuration options for managing secrets: filter_request_headers and filter_response_headers. These are implemented differently than filter_sensitive_data. The two new filters do simple value replacement or complete removal of request or response headers, whereas filter_sensitive_data uses regex to replace strings anywhere in the stored request/response. See the “Configure vcr” vignette for details (#182)
  • request matching: host and path now work (#177) (see also #70)
  • In previous versions of vcr the insert_cassette()/eject_cassette() workflow did not work because the webmockr triggers required only worked when using use_cassette(). This has been fixed now so you can use use_cassette(), passing a code block to it, or run insert_cassette() then run any code, then when finished run eject_cassette(). (#24) thanks @Robsteranium for the nudge, may not have fixed this without it
  • improve debugging experience: new vignette “Debugging your tests that use vcr”, including new function vcr_test_path() - which is now used in use_vcr() so that the correct path to tests is used when running tests both interactively and non-interactively (#192) (#193)
  • Dependencies: dropped lazyeval from Imports; withr added to Suggests; minimum webmockr version now v0.7.4
  • In README, point to rOpenSci code of conduct rather than file in repo
  • Gains function skip_if_vcr_off() to use in tests to skip a test if vcr is turned off (#191) (#195)

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • slight factor out of some code in YAML serializer to use elsewhere (#203) (#204)
  • serializers: drop $deserialize_string() method as was not used - rename $deserialize_path() method to just $deserialize() (#189)
  • serializers: with the new JSON serializer, documentation added to ?vcr_configure and ?use_cassette stating that you can have different cassettes with the same name as long as they use different serializers (and then have different file extensions). if you want to change serializers but do not want to keep the old cassette with the old serializer make sure to clean up the old file (#188)
  • now using GitHub Actions - remove Travis-CI and Appveyor (#175)
  • fixes for tests not being idempotent (#174) thanks @alex-gable
  • clean up UnhandledHTTPRequestError - remove unused variable cassette in $initialize() method (always use current_cassette() to get the cassette being used) (#163) tip from @aaronwolen
  • A change in latest webmockr release (v0.7.4) allowed for changes here to return an httr response object that more closely matches what httr returns in a real HTTP request. Before this the major problem was, assuming x is a httr response object, x$request was a RequestSignature object (from webmockr), whereas the class in a real httr response object is request (#132)
  • Re-factor of Cassette class greatly simplifying webmockr HTTP request stubbing (#98) (#173) big thanks to @alex-gable !
  • HTTPInteractionList improvement: in checking for request matches against those on disk we were checking all requesets in a cassette - faster to check and stop when a match found. Using new factored out function to do this checking that stops when first match found. Many more tests added to check this behavior (#69)
  • base64 encoded output in cassettes when using YAML serializer are now wrapped to approximately 80 character width (triggered when preserve_exact_body_bytes=TRUE) - this makes cassettes longer however. Implementing this brought in use of cpp11 (first use of C++ in vcr). This makes base64 encoded response body recording consistent with how vcr’s in other programming languages do it (#41)
  • decode_compressed_response option removed from Cassette class - wasn’t being used and won’t be used (#30)
  • add additional examples to VcrResponse docs showing what the update_content_length_header() does (#29)
  • use_vcr() changes: 1) now creates a test helper file called setup-pkgname.R instead of helper-pkgname.R; 2) now by default sets directory for fixtures using dir = vcr_test_path("fixtures") instead of dir = "../fixtures". See other news item about vcr_test_path

DOCUMENTATION

  • better description of vcr at top of README (#198)
  • delete unused docs folder in repository (docs built elsewhere) (#210)
  • tell users that explicitly loading vcr is required in your test setup (#185) (#186) thanks @KevCaz
  • added explanation of where and how webmockr is integrated in Cassette class - see section “Points of webmockr integration” in ?Cassette (#176) (see also #173)
  • improved getting started and protecting secrets sections in the introduction vignette (#170) (#172) thanks @DaveParr
  • add to introduction vignette a section titled “how to ensure tests work in the absence of a real API key” (#137) (#194)

vcr 0.5.4

CRAN release: 2020-03-31

NEW FEATURES

  • Error messages when tests using vcr fail are now simpler, primarily to reduce the space error messages take up. The user can toggle whether they get the new simplified error messages or the older format more verbose messages using the verbose_errors setting in the vcr_configure() function. In addition, vcr_last_error() gives the last full error, but that doesn’t help in non-interactive mode; if in non-interactive mode, which most users will be in when running the entire test suite for a package, you can set an environment variable (VCR_VERBOSE_ERRORS) to toggle this setting (e.g., Sys.setenv(VCR_VERBOSE_ERRORS=TRUE); devtools::test()) (#121) (#154)

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • changed write_disk_path handling internally to not run it through normalizePath before recording it to the cassette; passing the path through normalizePath was leading to the full path recorded in the cassette, which means in a package testing context that a test that uses a file on disk will (likely) only work on the machine the cassette was first created on. with relative paths in a package context, a test that has a file written on disk should now work in different testing contexts (locally, and various continuous integration platforms) (#135) (#166)
  • added a bit of documentation about large files created when using vcr, and how to ignore them if needed within .Rinstignore and/or .Rbuildignore (#164)

vcr 0.5.0

CRAN release: 2020-03-04

NEW FEATURES

  • new function check_cassette_names to use in your helper-pkgname.R file in your test suite; it checks for duplicated cassette names only. Any use of insert_cassette() (thereby, any use of use_cassette()) uses a revamped version of an internal fxn that checks for an improved list of potential problems in cassette names (#116) (#159)
  • use_vcr() adds gitignore cassette diffs via the addition of a gitattributes file (#109)
  • vcr_configure() overhaul: function no longer has each setting as a parameter; rather, it has an ellipsis (...), and internally we check parameters passed in. The documentation (?vcr_configure) lists the details for each available parameter. Importantly, each call to vcr_configure() now only changes the vcr settings for parameters passed in to the function; to reset all vcr settings, run vcr_configure_reset() (#136) (#141)
  • insert_cassette() and use_cassette() now inherit any vcr settings set by vcr_configure(); this wasn’t happening consistently before. Most default parameter values in insert_cassette/use_cassette set to NULL, in which case they inherit from whatever values are set by vcr_configure(), but can be overriden (#151) (#153)

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • define serialize, cassette, and fixture in the README (#138) (#139)
  • fix filter_sensitive_data parameter description in vcr_configure docs (#129)
  • move higher up in README a brief description of what this package does (#140)
  • import utils::getParseData so its in namespace (#142)
  • better cleanup of some stray test files left on disk (#148)
  • use_vcr() no longer uses context() in example test file (#144)
  • improved documentation of functions and environment variables for turning vcr on and off and when to use each of them - documentation mostly in the HTTP Testing book at https://books.ropensci.org/http-testing/lightswitch.html (#131)
  • fix a use_cassette test (#133)
  • Add assertions to vcr_configure() when parameters are set by the user to fail early (#156)

BUG FIXES

  • fix for handling of http requests that request image data AND do not write that data to disk; in addition, fix usage of preserve_exact_body_bytes when image data is in the response body (#128) thanks @Rekyt
  • vcr now should handle request bodies correctly on POST requests (#143)
  • Request matching was failing for empty bodies when “body” was one of the matchers (#157) (#161)
  • fix to sensitive_remove() internal function used when the user sets filter_sensitive_data in vcr_configure(); when an env var is missing in the filter_sensitive_data list, sensitive_remove() was causing C stack errors in some cases (#160) thanks @zachary-foster
  • fix for recording JSON-encoded bodies; vcr wasn’t handling HTTP requests when the user set the body to be encoded as JSON (e.g., encode="json" with crul or httr) (#130)

vcr 0.4.0

CRAN release: 2019-12-07

NEW FEATURES

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • documentation for R6 classes should be much better now; roxygen2 now officially supports R6 classes (#123)
  • added minimal cassette name checking; no spaces allowed and no file extensions allowed; more checks may be added later (#106)

BUG FIXES

  • fix handling of http response bodies that are images; we were converting raw class bodies into character, which was causing images to error, which can’t be converted to character; we now check if a body can be converted to character or not and if not, leave it as is (#112) (#119) thanks @Rekyt for the report
  • simple auth with package httr wasn’t working (htrr::authenticate()); we were not capturing use of authenticate; it’s been solved now (#113)
  • we were not properly capturing request bodies with package httr requests; that’s been fixed (#122)
  • httr adapter was failing on second run, reading a cached response. fixed now (#124)
  • response_summary() fixed; this function prints a summary of the http response body; sometimes this function would fail with multibyte string error because the gsub call would change the encoding, then would fail on the substring call; we now set useBytes = TRUE in the gsub call to avoid this problem (#126)

vcr 0.3.0

CRAN release: 2019-08-20

NEW FEATURES

  • new internal method up_to_date_interactions in cassette_class now allows filtering cassettes by user specified date (#96) (#104)
  • re-recording now works - see new use_cassette() parameters re_record_interval and clean_outdated_http_interactions; you can now set a re-record interval (in seconds) so that you can for example always re-record cassettes if you don’t want cassettes to be more than X days old; depends on new internal method up_to_date_interactions (#104) (#105)

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • fix link to HTTP Testing Book: ropensci -> ropenscilabs (#100)
  • add new section to HTTP Testing Book on “vcr enabled testing” with sub-sections on check vs. test, your package on CRAN, and your package on continuous integration sites (#102)

BUG FIXES

  • fix request body matching - partly through fixes to webmockr package (requires v0.4 or greater); more generally, makes single type request matching (e.g., just HTTP method, or just URL) possible, it was not working before, but is now working; added examples of doing single type matching (#70) (#76) (#108)
  • fixed type in cassette_class where typo lead to not setting headers correctly in the webmockr::wi_th() call (#107)

vcr 0.2.6

CRAN release: 2019-02-12

NEW FEATURES

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • lots of tidying for better/consistent style
  • fix for a partial argument call in as.list(): all to all.names

BUG FIXES

  • error thrown with httr due to wrong date format. the problem was in the webmockr package. see ropensci/webmockr#58 (#91) thanks @Bisaloo
  • fix for use_cassette() when using httr: we weren’t collecting status_code and storing it with the cassette (#92) thanks @Bisaloo
  • fixes for use_cassette() for httr: was working fine with a single httr request, but not with 2 or more (#93) (#94) thanks @Rekyt
  • in error blocks with use_cassette() the URL is presented from the request, and if there’s a secret (API key) in the URL as a query parameter (or in any other place in the URL) then that secret is shown to the world (including if the error block happens on CI on the public web). This is fixed now; we use directives from your filter_sensitive_data call in vcr_configure() to mask secrets in error messages (#89) (#90)

vcr 0.2.2

CRAN release: 2019-01-13

MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

  • typo fixes (#85) thanks @Rekyt
  • added to docs: at least one person has reported different results using vcr with devtools::check vs. devtools::test (#83)
  • changed suggested usage of vcr in test suites from use_cassette block wrapped in test_that to the other way around; leads to testthat pointing to the actual test line that failed rather than pointing to the start of the use_cassette block (#86)

BUG FIXES

  • Fix for %||% internal function. Was incorrectly doing logical comparison; when headers list was passed one or more of the tests in the if statement had length > 1. Dev R is testing for this (#87)

vcr 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2018-10-19

NEW FEATURES

  • gains support for the httr package. vcr now supports crul and httr. Some of the integration for httr is via webmockr, while some of the tooling resides here in vcr (#73) (#79)

BUG FIXES

  • fix handling of response bodies when not raw type (#77) (#78)

vcr 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2018-05-14

NEW FEATURES

  • released to CRAN