I wrote an R function that updates the version number of a package in another question. I work a lot with GitHub and RStudio, and it would safe me quite some time (plus be much more precise) if this function was automatically run every time I opened a certain project (or better yet, make a git commit/push, but I assume that is harder to do). But I don't know how to do this or if this is even possible.
I could use .Rprofile to run R codes every time I start R, so I could just update versions whenever I start R (or build in that it only updates the version if the date is not today or something) but that seems overdoing it.
You can make a separate .Rprofile for each project. You have to put it in the main directory of the project (http://www.rstudio.com/ide/docs/using/projects).
Well I would use .Rprofile for that. There is something to be said for being independent of the tool chain around you: knitr works from RStudio as well as without it, dito for Rcpp/RInside etc pp.
You can hook into commit hooks for svn, both explicitly via hooks in the back end, or simply at your by end adding wrapper scripts. I presume you can do likewise with git but I simply know much less about it. So to abstract this away, I would write myself a 'commitThis' or 'pushThis' or ... function that does the number increment, test run, code push and what have you.
If your code needs RStudio to be already running (e.g. because it's relying on some rstudioapi:: function), putting it directly in .Rprofile won't work (.Rprofile is executed before RStudio is available).
Instead, you could set a hook for "rstudio.sessionInit":
setHook(
hookName = "rstudio.sessionInit",
action = function(newSession) {
if (newSession) {
# your code goes here
},
action = "append"
)
Related
Despite numerous searches, I can't seem to find a clear explanation as to what "Source on Save" means in RStudio.
I have tried ?source and the explanation there isn't clear, either.
As far as I can tell, it seems to run the script when I hit Save, but I don't understand the relevance/significance of it.
In simple terms, what exactly does Source on Save do and why would/should I use it?
This is kind of a shortcut to save and execute your code. You type something, save the script and it will be automatically sourced.
Very useful for short scripts but very annoying for time consuming longer scripts.
So sourcing is basically running each line of your file.
EDIT:
SO thinking of a scenario where this might be useful...
You developing a function which you will later put into a package... So you write this function already in an extra file but execute the function for testing in the command line...
Normally, you have to execute the whole function again, when you changed something. While using "Source on Save" the function will be executed and you can use Ctrl + 2 to jump into command line and test the function directly.
Since I am working with R, my datasets are much bigger. But I am remembering starting coding in python and vi, I updated my setting in a way to execute the code on save, since these little scripts where done in less then 10 seconds...
So maybe it is just not standard to work with small datasets... But I can still recommend it, for development, to use only 10% of a normal dataset. It will speed up the graphics creation and a lot of other things as well. Test it with the complete dataset every now and then.
I want an R script to continuously run and check for files in a folder and do something with those files.
The code simply checks for a file, then moves the file to somewhere else and renames it, deleting the old file (in reality it's a bit more elabore than this).
If I run the script it works fine, however I want R to automatically detect for the files. In other words, is there a way to have R run the script continuously so that I don't have to run the script if I put files in that folder?
In pure R you just need an infinite repeat loop...
repeat {
print('Checking files')
# Your code to do file manipulation
Sys.sleep(time=5) # to stop execution for 5 sec
}
However there may be better tools suitable to do this kind of file manipulation depending on your OS.
You can use the function tclTaskSchedule from the tcltk2 package to schedule a function or expression to run on a regular interval. You can have multiple such tasks scheduled and still work in the R session (just be careful not to modify something that the scheduled task could also modify or you can get unpredictable results).
Though an OS based solution that runs a given rscript may still be a better approach.
I wrote an R function that updates the version number of a package in another question. I work a lot with GitHub and RStudio, and it would safe me quite some time (plus be much more precise) if this function was automatically run every time I opened a certain project (or better yet, make a git commit/push, but I assume that is harder to do). But I don't know how to do this or if this is even possible.
I could use .Rprofile to run R codes every time I start R, so I could just update versions whenever I start R (or build in that it only updates the version if the date is not today or something) but that seems overdoing it.
You can make a separate .Rprofile for each project. You have to put it in the main directory of the project (http://www.rstudio.com/ide/docs/using/projects).
Well I would use .Rprofile for that. There is something to be said for being independent of the tool chain around you: knitr works from RStudio as well as without it, dito for Rcpp/RInside etc pp.
You can hook into commit hooks for svn, both explicitly via hooks in the back end, or simply at your by end adding wrapper scripts. I presume you can do likewise with git but I simply know much less about it. So to abstract this away, I would write myself a 'commitThis' or 'pushThis' or ... function that does the number increment, test run, code push and what have you.
If your code needs RStudio to be already running (e.g. because it's relying on some rstudioapi:: function), putting it directly in .Rprofile won't work (.Rprofile is executed before RStudio is available).
Instead, you could set a hook for "rstudio.sessionInit":
setHook(
hookName = "rstudio.sessionInit",
action = function(newSession) {
if (newSession) {
# your code goes here
},
action = "append"
)
I have an R-based GUI that allows some non-technical users access to a stats model. As it stands, the users have to first load R and then type loadGui() at the command line.
While this isn't overly challenging, I don't like having to make non-technical people type anything at a command line. I had the idea of writing a .bat file (users are all running Windows, though multi-platform solutions also appreciated) that starts R GUI, then autoruns that command.
My first problem is opening RGui from the command line. While I can provide an explicit path, such as
"%ProgramW6432%\R\R-2.15.1\bin\i386\Rgui.exe"
it will need updating each time R is upgraded. It would be better to retrieve the location of RGui from the %path% environment variable, but I don't know an easy way to parse that.
The second, larger problem is how to call commands for R on startup from the command line. My first thought is that I could take a copy of ~/.Rprofile, append the extra command, and then replace the original copy of the file once R is loaded. This is awfully messy though, so I'd like an alternative.
Running R in batch mode isn't an option, firstly since I can't persuade GUIs to display themselves, and secondly because I would like the R console available, even if the users shouldn't need to use it.
If you want a toy GUI to test your ideas, try this:
loadGui <- function()
{
library(gWidgetstclck)
win <- gwindow("test")
rad <- gradio(letters[1:3], cont = win)
}
Problem 1: I simply do not ever install in the suggested default directory on Windows, but rather group R and a few related things in, say, c:/opt/ where I install R itself in, say,c:/opt/R-current so that the path c:/opt/R-current/bin will remain constant. On upgrade, I first renamed to R-previous and then install into a new R-current.
Problem 2: I think I solved that many moons ago with scripts. You can now use Rscript.exe to launch these, and there are tcltk examples for waiting for a prompt.
I have done similar a couple of times. In my cases the client was using windows so I just installed R on their computer and created a shortcut on their desktop to run R. Then I right click on the shortcut and choose properties to get the propertiest dialog. I then changed the "Start in" folder to the one where I wanted it to run from (which had the .Rdata file with the correct data and either a .First function in the .Rdata file or .Rprofile in the folder). There is also a "Run:" option that has a "Minimized" option to run the main R window minimized.
I had created the functions that I wanted to run (usually a specialized gui using tcltk) and any needed data and saved them in the .Rdata file and also either created .First or .Rprofile to run the comnand that showed the gui. The user double clicks on the icon on the desktop and up pops my GUI that they can work with while ignoring the other parts.
Take a look at the ProjectTemplate library. It does what you want to do. It loads used libraries from a batch file an run R files automatically after loading as well as a lot of other usefull stuff as well...
Using the answer from https://stackoverflow.com/a/27350487/41338 and a comment from Richie Cotton above I have arrived at the following solution to keeping a script alive until a window is closed by checking if the pointer to the window is valid.
For a RGtk2 window created and shown using:
library(RGtk2)
mainWindow <- gtkWindow("toplevel", show = TRUE)
Create a function which checks if the pointer to it exists:
isnull <- function(pointer){
a <- attributes(pointer)
attributes(pointer) <- NULL
out <- identical(pointer, new("externalptr"))
attributes(pointer) <- a
return(out)
}
and at the end of your script:
while(!isnull(mainWindow)) Sys.sleep(1)
I have about 5 scripts that are all part of a project to be run one after the other. I would like to open the first script, run it and then be prompted at the end, "Do you want to run XrefGenetic.r?" If yes, then XrefGenetic.r should open and run. I am 100% certain R can do this, in fact I think I used to know how but have forgotten and cannot find it anywhere.
How do I open another r script from within an r script?
Are you thinking of source() ?
My usual recommendation is to create a package, as that alleviates all these issues: functions and symbols are known (or hidden if you chose not to export them) and you have generally much better control.