Handling Plots with RCallerPhp Edition

Now we have RCaller Php edition, named RCallerPhp, which is able to handle images generated by R. I hope it will bring an other easy solution for calling R from other platforms.

With this feature, web developers that use Php as their main language and need calculations done by R will easly use this library.

It is distributed as its big brother, RCaller Java Edition, with the LGPL (Lesser GNU Public License).
RCallerPhp is intended to be compatible as much as possible with the Java version. So, investigating the old examples may be helpful for understanding this new release.

In a time of less than a week, we released this version without the plotting support. By now, generating R plots and showing them in a browser is implemented. Generated plots are stored in the temp directory instead www directory. That is why we are encoding generated plots inside the img src tags with base64 encoding. You can have a look at the source code at RCaller source code at Google project hosting.

Handling plots with RCallerPhp is quite easy. Let's have a look at the code below:

<?php

require_once("../RCode.php");
require_once("../RCaller.php");
require_once("simpletest.php");

$caller = new RCaller();
$code = new RCode("");

$plot = $code->startPlot();
$code->addRCode("plot.ts(rnorm(10))");
$code->endPlot();

$caller->setRscriptExecutable("/usr/bin/Rscript");
$caller->setRCode($code);
$caller->runOnly();

print($caller->getPlot($plot));
?>

Here is the generated output, which is copied from the web browser:

Nothing is easier than this! Do not hasitate to ask anything about RCaller.
We hope you enjoy...
Have fun...

RCallerPhp is ready for testing

Hey web guys! RCaller now supports Php and we are planning to carry RCaller to other platforms and languages. The first step of our attack plan was to implement a Php edition and it is ready for testing now.

The second step is to implement RCaller for Perl and Python. We have now our Perl developer and he is in progress. Python is not our primary language and we are waiting for your helps. If you are familier with R and a developer of one of those languages below, join us. We are planning to carry RCaller to

• Python
• .Net

at first.

And... How it looks like.. Let's give up Java and speak Php for a minute:

 <?php
 include_once ("RCaller.php");
 
 $rcaller = new RCaller();
   $rcaller->setRscriptExecutable("/usr/bin/Rscript");
   $rcode = new RCode("");
   $rcode->clear();
   $rcode->addRCode("mylist <- list(x=1:3, y=c(7,8,9))");
 
   $rcaller->setRCode($rcode);
   $rcaller->runAndReturnResult("mylist");
 
   $x = $rcaller->getParser()->getAsStringArray("x");
   $y = $rcaller->getParser()->getAsStringArray("y");
 
   echo ("X is <br>");
   print_r ($x);
 
   echo ("<br><br>Y is <br>");
   print_r ($y);
 ?>

Waaav! Nothings changes! When you run this code, you will see values of x as 1, 2 and 3 and values of y as 7, 8, 9... The code above seems 100% compatible with the original library...

If you have used RCaller (Java edition) before, you will probably
understand the whole code. If not, lets have a look at the page RCaller 2.0 - Calling R from Java.


Note that, it is as in-efficient as the original version. Because RCaller creates external Rscript processes in each time RunAndReturnResult() thingies called. Be careful before using it in big and critical projects. Another note is about using it with too many users. RCaller uses temp directory to store its R codes and outputs. You need to clear this directory periodically. Otherwise you can have a "too many files" error.


Finally, source of is ready for use and development. Please visit the RCaller source code and downloads page. Php codes are stored as a separate project with name RCallerPhp.

Test it and do not hasitate to ask us!