Find all my posts about webR here.
Note: the first post of this series explaining roughly what
webR
is, I won’t introduce it again here.
In this blogpost, you’ll find some updates about some recent changes made in webrcli
& spidyr
.
What webrcli & spidy wants to achieve
In a nutshell, the goal of webrcli
& spidyr
is to provide an interface for bringing your R functions inside a NodeJS runtime.
Think of it as something that wants to achieve the following interation:
An R dev writes, builds and shares a package called
{rfuns}
, which contains a function calledhello_world()
A NodeJS dev takes this package, can call it with
rfuns.hello_world()
, access and manipulate the results with JavaScript.
An important note
With webR
& the tools described below, there is no R session running while the NodeJS app is running. spidyr
imports an R function converted to a native JS.rfuns.hello_world
does not call an R session running somewhere else.
That also means that if you build a container containing the app, you don’t need to install R in it. It’s a NodeJS app.
Below are some updates recently made to both webrcli
& spidyr
.
Making the template code smaller
When drafting the first code of webrcli
& spidyr
, I focused on providing a minimal template for an index.js
loading your R functions, contained in a subdirectory inside your node project.
This worked, but might have been a bit complex to grasp. Provided you don’t change the default names of the folders (in that case you’ll need to modify the default parameters), the new default index.js
look like this:
const {
initSpidyr,
mountLocalPackage
} = require('spidyr');
(async () => {
await initSpidyr()
const rfuns = await mountLocalPackage("./rfuns");
const hw = await rfuns.hello_world()
console.log(hw.values);
console.log("✅ Everything is ready!");
})();
This minimal template makes it easier to read and understand what the code does. Note that you’ll get this template if you run webrcli init myproject
.
Let’s decompose what this code does :
await initSpidyr()
will create an object calledspidyr_webR
stored asglobalThis.spidyr_webR
,init()
it (as inwebr.init()
), and load the packages contained in the./webr_packages
folder inside your project dir, the one containing the packages installed withwebrcli install
.const rfuns = await mountLocalPackage("./rfuns");
will take the R package contained in./rfuns
, load it into the webR instance (spidyr_webR
), recursively get all the exported functions from your package, and store them inside therfuns
object.const hw = await rfuns.hello_world()
will call thehello_world()
function from{rfuns}
. The values are thenconsole.log
ed.
new Library()
is now library()
Calling a package is now const spongebob = library("spongebob")
instead of the previous approach which was const spongebob = new Library("spongebob");await spongebob.load(globalThis.webR);
Better installation from package.json & DESCRIPTION
The previous version of webrcli
did not stored nor re-installed the R package installed in the project, meaning that if you git cloned a project, you had to guess what R packages to re-install.
Now, a project initiated with webrcli
will store all the packages installed with webrcli install
inside the package.json
file. Then, when running the npm install
command, the R packages will also be redownloaded.
You can also installed a series of packages based on a DESCRIPTION
file with webrcli installFromDesc
.
Other tools
-
shareEnv
allows to copy one, several or all env var from node to the webR instance.
Workflow summary
webrcli init myproject
will create a project skeleton at./myproject
webrcli install spongebob
will download the version of{spongebob}
compiled forwebR
, and add it to./webr_packages
.You can then modify you R code with your own functions.
Call your R function from
rfuns.xyz()
in NodeRun with
npm start
Please do give it a shot
I think I’ve been the only user for now 😅, so please do try these and let me know what you think.
Future works
Here are what I plan on working in the upcoming weeks:
webrcli init
should allow for specifying awebr
version from npm issue 17initSpidyr
should allow to pass params towebR.init()
issue 12Allow to install from
r-universe
, something likewebrcli installFromRUniverse
issue 16. Probably in the future it will be merged towebrcli install
and we’ll have a way to guess what the user wants based on the input.A small converter from R named list to JS objects Issue 3
More documentation, and probably documenting the conversion of an existing
{shiny}
app to aspidyr
based one.
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