Downloading Geo Dataset'S Sample Information, But Not Platform Information

Question

[Backlin]

I want to download the sample information of a 450k methylation array dataset (GSE49031). However, when I try to do so with the R code below I automatically also download and parse a 213.4 MB soft file with the platform information, including annotations for the 485577 probes. This takes a long time and I am not interested in doing it. Is there a way to only get the sample information?

gse <- getGEO("GSE49031", destdir="data")

I tried to be clever and downloaded the series information manually prior to parsing (which is only 24.8 kB), but getGEO still went online and downloaded the platform information.

in.file <- "data/GSE49031_series_matrix.txt.gz"
download.file("ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/series/GSE49nnn/GSE49031/matrix/GSE49031_series_matrix.txt.gz", in.file)
gse <- getGEO(filename=in.file, destdir="data")

I have read the manual and searched for a solution online, but cannot figure out how to do it.

[Sean Davis]

You might want to look at the GEOmetadb package.

[Backlin]

Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it!

[Rm]

Interesting question: can you post the solution you might have ...