geobr() not downloading for MacOS

[jiyanair]

Hi geobr team 👋 — I’ve been trying to use read_municipality() to load shapefiles for Brazilian municipalities, but keep encountering a persistent error that seems to stem from missing metadata files hosted on GitHub.

library(geobr)

# Attempting to load Acrelândia (code_muni = 1200179) for 2017
read_municipality(code_muni = 1200179, year = 2017)

# Also fails for 2020
read_municipality(code_muni = 1200179, year = 2020)

Error in !downloaded_files$success : invalid argument type

After debugging, I found that the error is coming from download_metadata(), which tries to fetch this URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ipeaGIT/geobr/master/r-package/metadata/metadata_simplified_municipality_2017.csv

This returns a 404 error (file not found), and the same happens for 2020 and other years. As a result, read_municipality() gets a malformed object and crashes when it tries to access downloaded_files$success.

Even when manually patching download_metadata() to return a valid list object, the underlying problem remains — the required metadata CSVs for those years do not exist.

✅ Expected Behavior
read_municipality() should check if the metadata URL exists before attempting to read it.

If the file doesn't exist, it should raise a user-friendly message explaining the problem.

Alternatively, fallback options or guidance on supported years would be helpful.

⚠️ Context
This seems to impact all requests to read_municipality() for certain years (2017, 2020) — even for valid municipality codes like 1200179. Is there something that I've done wrong in the download process?

[jiyanair]

This is the error I'm receving:

muni <- read_municipality(code_muni = "MG",

•                       year = 2007,
  

•                       showProgress = FALSE)
  

Error in download_metadata() : object 'check_con' not found

[rafapereirabr]

I cannot reproduce your error. The code below works just fine. What version of the package are you using ?

geobr::read_municipality(code_muni = 1200179, year = 2017)

[jiyanair]

I'm using: geobr_1.9.1.tar.gz. When I run the above code you've shared I receive the following error:

geobr::read_municipality(code_muni = 1200179, year = 2017)
Error in download_metadata() : object 'check_con' not found

[rafapereirabr]

could you please try reestarting your R session and trying it again?

[jiyanair]

Hi Rafael, thank you so much for your guidance on this. I think that maybe my internet is not secure enough to reach the database. When I use a virtual desktop with a more encrypted WiFi network I am able to access geobr() succesfully

[rafapereirabr]

hmmm. It would be good to replicate this error to investigate this further. any suggestions on how to do this ?
maybe you were in a network where the proxy blocked the url of geobr data