Logging console history with errors in R or Rstudio - r

For educational purposes we are logging all commands that students type in the rstudio console during labs. In addition we would like to store if call was successful or raised an error, to identify students which struggling to get the syntax right.
The best I can come up with is something like this:
options(error = function(){
timestamp("USER ERROR", quiet = TRUE)
})
This adds an ## ERROR comment on the history log when an exception occurs. Thereby we could analyze history files to see which commands were followed by an ## ERROR comment.
However R's internal history system is not well suited for logging because it is in-memory, limited size and needs to be stored manually with savehistory(). Also I would prefer to store log one-line-per-call, i.e. escape linebreaks for multi-line commands.
Is there perhaps a hook or in the R or RStudio console for logging actual executed commands? That would allow me to insert each evaluated expression (and error) in a database along with a username and timestamp.

A possible solution would be to use addTaskCallback or the taskCallbackManager with a function that writes each top-level command to your database. The callback will only fire on the successful completion of a command, so you would still need to call a logging function on an error.
# error handler
logErr <- function() {
# turn logging callback off while we process errors separately
tcbm$suspend(TRUE)
# turn them back on when we're done
on.exit(tcbm$suspend(FALSE))
sc <- sys.calls()
sclen <- length(sc) # last call is this function call
if(sclen > 1L) {
cat("myError:\n", do.call(paste, c(lapply(sc[-sclen], deparse), sep="\n")), "\n")
} else {
# syntax error, so no call stack
# show the last line entered
# (this won't be helpful if it's a parse error in a function)
file1 <- tempfile("Rrawhist")
savehistory(file1)
rawhist <- readLines(file1)
unlink(file1)
cat("myError:\n", rawhist[length(rawhist)], "\n")
}
}
options(error=logErr)
# top-level callback handler
log <- function(expr, value, ok, visible) {
cat(deparse(expr), "\n")
TRUE
}
tcbm <- taskCallbackManager()
tcbm$add(log, name = "log")
This isn't a complete solution, but I hope it gives you enough to get started. Here's an example of what the output looks like.
> f <- function() stop("error")
f <- function() stop("error")
> hi
Error: object 'hi' not found
myError:
hi
> f()
Error in f() : error
myError:
f()
stop("error")

Related

Invoke interrupt from R code

I have a generic function to catch all exceptions included in my package logR::tryCatch2 defined as:
tryCatch2 <- function(expr){
V=E=W=M=I=NULL
e.handler = function(e){
E <<- e
NULL
}
w.handler = function(w){
W <<- c(W, list(w))
invokeRestart("muffleWarning")
}
m.handler = function(m){
attributes(m$call) <- NULL
M <<- c(M, list(m))
}
i.handler = function(i){
I <<- i
NULL
}
V = suppressMessages(withCallingHandlers(
tryCatch(expr, error = e.handler, interrupt = i.handler),
warning = w.handler,
message = m.handler
))
list(value=V, error=E, warning=W, message=M, interrupt=I)
}
As you can see in the last line it returns a list which is more or less self describing.
It makes the real reaction to the exceptions delayed after the tryCatch2 call by simple !is.null:
f = function(){ warning("warn1"); warning("warn2"); stop("err") }
r = tryCatch2(f())
if(!is.null(r$error)) cat("Error detected\n")
# Error detected
if(!is.null(r$warning)) cat("Warning detected, count", length(r$warning), "\n")
# Warning detected, count 2
It works as expected, I can react with my own code. But in some cases I would like to not stop the interrupt process which is caught too. At the moment it seems I would need to add additional parameter to tryCatch2 which would control if interrupts should be catch or not. So the question asks about some invokeInterrupt function which I could use in the following way:
g = function(){ Sys.sleep(60); f() }
r = tryCatch2(g())
# interrupt by pressing ctrl+c / stop while function is running!
if(!is.null(r$interrupt)) cat("HERE I would like to invoke interrupt\n")
# HERE I would like to invoke interrupt
I think if R is able to catch one it should be also able to invoke one.
How can I achieve invokeInterrupt functionality?
I can propose a partial solution, which relies on the tools package.
invokeInterrupt <- function() {
require(tools)
processId <- Sys.getpid()
pskill(processId, SIGINT)
}
However, be aware that throwing the interrupt signal (SIGINT) with pskill doesn't appear to be very robust. I ran a few tests by sending the exception and catching it with your function, like so:
will_interrupt <- function() {
Sys.sleep(3)
invokeInterrupt()
Sys.sleep(3)
}
r = tryCatch2(will_interrupt())
On linux, this worked well when executed from the R commandline. On windows, the R commandline and R Gui did close when executing this code. There is worse: on both linux and windows, this code crashed Rstudio instantly...
So, if your code is to be executed from the R commandline on Linux, this solution should be OK. Otherwise you might be out of luck...
Late answer but I have found that rlang::interrupt can throw "user interrupts":
interrupt() allows R code to simulate a user interrupt of the kind that is signalled with Ctrl-C.
It is currently not possible to create custom interrupt condition objects.
Source: ?rlang::interrupt
Internally it calls the R API function Rf_onintr which is an alias for the function onintr.
Basically an interrupt is "just" a special condition with these classes:
interrupt and condition (see the R source code).
If you just want to simulate an interrupt to test tryCatching (without the need to interrupt a running R statement) it suffice to throw a condition with these classes via signalCondition:
interrupt_condition <- function() {
structure(list(), class = c("interrupt", "condition"))
}
tryCatch(signalCondition(interrupt_condition()),
interrupt = function(x) print("interrupt detected"))
# [1] "interrupt detected"

failed - "cannot open the connection"

I am trying to read several url files. Does anyone know how to check first if it can open the url and then do something? Sometimes I am getting error (failed="cannot open the connection"). I just want this to skip if it cannot open the connection.
urlAdd=paste0(server,siteID,'.dly')
# Reading the whole data in the page
if(url(urlAdd)) {
tmp <- read.fwf(urlAdd,widths=c(11,4,2,4,rep(c(5,1,1,1),31)))
}
But this condition fails.
You can use tryCatch which returns the value of the expression if it succeeds, and the value of the error argument if there is an error. See ?tryCatch.
This example looks up a bunch of URLs and downloads them. The tryCatch will return the result of readlines if it is successful, and NULL if not. If the result is NULL we just next() to the next part of the loop.
urls <- c('http://google.com', 'http://nonexistent.jfkldasf', 'http://stackoverflow.com')
for (u in urls) {
# I only put warn=F to avoid the "incomplete final line" warning
# you put read.fwf or whatever here.
tmp <- tryCatch(readLines(url(u), warn=F),
error = function (e) NULL)
if (is.null(tmp)) {
# you might want to put some informative message here.
next() # skip to the next url.
}
}
Note this will do so on any error, not just a "404 not found"-type error. If I typo'd and wrote tryCatch(raedlines(url(u), warn=F) (typo on readLines) it'd just skip everything as this would also through an error.
edit re: comments (lapply is being used, where to put data-processing code). Instead of next(), just only do your processing if the read succeeds. Put data-processing code after reading-data code. Try something like:
lapply(urls,
function (u) {
tmp <- tryCatch(read.fwf(...), error = function (e) NULL)
if (is.null(tmp)) {
# read failed
return() # or return whatever you want the failure value to be
}
# data processing code goes here.
})
The above returns out of the function (only affects the current element of lapply) if the read fails.
Or you could invert it and do something like:
lapply(urls,
function (u) {
tmp <- tryCatch(read.fwf(...), error = function (e) NULL)
if (!is.null(tmp)) {
# read succeeded!
# data processing code goes here.
}
})
which will do the same (it only does your data processing code if the read succeeded, and otherwise skips that whole block of code and returns NULL).

Use tryCatch or other handling for callAPI error in Rfacebook

I have a list of facebook user names that might contain errors. I want to call getUsers on the lot of them and get how many likes each one has. If getUsers encounters a bad user name, I want to remove it from the list and try again.
I want to do this in Rfacebook (but if the answer is that I must use httr and write the GET requests myself, so be it).
load("fbCred.RData") # you will need a Facebook credential to execute this
library(Rfacebook)
fb_users <- c("brucespringsteen","coldplay")
fb_likes <- tryCatch(getUsers(users=fb_users,token=fbCred)$likes)
fb_likes # Returns: [1] 4807200 36768913
fb_users <- c("brucespringsteen","coldplay","This-Bad-Name-Will-Fail")
fb_likes <- tryCatch(getUsers(users=fb_users,token=fbCred)$likes)
# Returns:
# Error in callAPI(query, token) :
# (#803) Some of the aliases you requested do not exist: This-Bad-Name-Will-Fail
if(inherits(fb_likes,"error")){
# I want to remove the one that failed from the list of users and try again.
# But the callAPI error never makes it into fb_likes.
}
Is there a way to do it in Rfacebook? How do I retrieve the name of the bad user so that I can remove it from the list and retry?
EDIT: I know I can loop through the user names one by one. That is my current workaround (using adply) but takes much much longer.
The error is of class "try-error", not "error". Also, you need to use try, not tryCatch:
fb_likes <- try(getUsers(users=fb_users,token=fbCred)$likes)
if(inherits(fb_likes, "try-error")) { ... }
should work. tryCatch is more complex and requires a different structure, something like:
tryCatch(
fb_likes <- getUsers(users=fb_users,token=fbCred)$likes,
error=function(e) {
err.msg <- conditionMessage(e)
...
} )
load("fbCred.RData") # you will need a Facebook credential to execute this
library(Rfacebook)
fb_users <- c("brucespringsteen","coldplay","This_Will_Fail","Bad_Bad_Bad")
fb_likes <- try(getUsers(users=fb_users,token=fbCred)$likes)
if(inherits(fb_likes,"try-error")){
bad_users <- unlist(strsplit(sub(".*exist\\:\\s+(.*)\\n$","\\1",
fb_likes[1]),split=","))
print(paste("These user names failed, removing:",
paste(bad_users,collapse=", ")))
fb_users <- setdiff(fb_users,bad_users)
fb_likes <- getUsers(users=fb_users,token=fbCred)$likes
}
print(data.frame(fb_users,fb_likes))
Produces the desired output:
[1] "These user names failed, removing: This_Will_Fail, Bad_Bad_Bad"
fb_users fb_likes
1 brucespringsteen 4808496
2 coldplay 36786558
To extract the list of bad users (using a regex and strsplit) one can start from geterrmessage() (assuming it's the last error) but it's probably more reliable to start from the try-error object itself. Then I use setdiff to remove the bad users.

Stopping an R script quietly and return control to the terminal [duplicate]

Is there any way to stop an R program without error?
For example I have a big source, defining several functions and after it there are some calls to the functions. It happens that I edit some function, and want the function definitions to be updated in R environment, but they are not actually called.
I defined a variable justUpdate and when it is TRUE want to stop the program just after function definitions.
ReadInput <- function(...) ...
Analyze <- function(...) ...
WriteOutput <- function(...) ...
if (justUpdate)
stop()
# main body
x <- ReadInput()
y <- Analyze(x)
WriteOutput(y)
I have called stop() function, but the problem is that it prints an error message.
ctrl+c is another option, but I want to stop the source in specific line.
The problem with q() or quit() is that it terminates R session, but I would like to have the R session still open.
As #JoshuaUlrich proposed browser() can be another option, but still not perfect, because the source terminates in a new environment (i.e. the R prompt will change to Browser[1]> rather than >). Still we can press Q to quit it, but I am looking for the straightforward way.
Another option is to use if (! justUpdate) { main body } but it's clearing the problem, not solving it.
Is there any better option?
I found a rather neat solution here. The trick is to turn off all error messages just before calling stop(). The function on.exit() is used to make sure that error messages are turned on again afterwards. The function looks like this:
stop_quietly <- function() {
opt <- options(show.error.messages = FALSE)
on.exit(options(opt))
stop()
}
The first line turns off error messages and stores the old setting to the variable opt. After this line, any error that occurs will not output a message and therfore, also stop() will not cause any message to be printed.
According to the R help,
on.exit records the expression given as its argument as needing to be executed when the current function exits.
The current function is stop_quietly() and it exits when stop() is called. So the last thing that the program does is call options(opt) which will set show.error.messages to the value it had, before stop_quietly() was called (presumably, but not necessarily, TRUE).
There is a nice solution in a mailing list here that defines a stopQuietly function that basically hides the error shown from the stop function:
stopQuietly <- function(...) {
blankMsg <- sprintf("\r%s\r", paste(rep(" ", getOption("width")-1L), collapse=" "));
stop(simpleError(blankMsg));
} # stopQuietly()
> stopQuietly()
I have a similar problem and, based on #VangelisTasoulas answer, I got a simple solution.
Inside functions, I have to check if DB is updated. If it is not, stop the execution.
r=readline(prompt="Is DB updated?(y/n)")
Is DB updated?(y/n)n
if(r != 'y') stop('\r Update DB')
Update DB
Just putting \r in the beginning of the message, overwrite Error: in the message.
You're looking for the function browser.
You can use the following solution to stop an R program without error:
if (justUpdate)
return(cat(".. Your Message .. "))
Just return something at the line you want to quit the function:
f <- function(x, dry=F) {
message("hi1")
if (dry) return(x)
message("hi2")
x <- 2*x
}
y1 <- f(2) # = 4 hi1 hi2
y2 <- f(2, dry=T) # = 2 hi1
In addition to answer from Stibu on Mar 22 '17 at 7:29, if you want to write a message as a part of stop(), this message is not written.
I perceive strange that following two lines have to be used meaning on.exit(options(options(show....))) doesn't work.
opt <- options(show.error.messages = F)
on.exit(options(opt))
I had forgotten the answer to this and needed to look it up and landed here... You posted the hint to the answer in your question...
ctrl+c is another option, but I want to stop the source in specific line.
Signal an error, warning, or message
rlang::inform("Updated Only")
rlang::interrupt()
I've found it good to write a script and run it with source(). In the script, a write exit statements as a special class of error that a tryCatch() can pick up and send back as just a message:
exit <- function(..., .cl = NULL) {
# Use to capture acceptable stop
cond <- structure(
list(.makeMessage(...), .cl),
class = c("exitError", "error", "condition"),
names = c("message", "call")
)
stop(cond)
}
foo <- function() {
exit("quit here")
1
}
tryCatch(
# rather than foo(), you might use source(filename)
foo(),
exitError = function(e) message(e$message)
)
#> quit here
Created on 2022-01-24 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)
You can use with_options() in the withr package to temporarily disable error messages and then you can call stop() directly.
Here is an example:
weird_math <- function(x, y, z) {
if (x > z) {
withr::with_options(
list(show.error.messages = FALSE),
{
print("You can execute other code here if you want")
stop()
}
)
}
# only runs if x <= z
x + y ^ z
}
weird_math(1, 2, 3)
[1] 9
weird_math(3, 2, 1)
[1] "You can execute other code here if you want"
why not just use an if () {} else {}? It's only a couple of characters...
f1 <- function(){}
f2 <- function(){}
if (justUpdate) {
} else {
# main body
}
or even
f1 <- function(){}
f2 <- function(){}
if (!justUpdate) {
# main body
}
The below code work for me stopped without error messages.
opt <- options(show.error.messages = FALSE)
on.exit(options(opt))
break

Stop an R program without error

Is there any way to stop an R program without error?
For example I have a big source, defining several functions and after it there are some calls to the functions. It happens that I edit some function, and want the function definitions to be updated in R environment, but they are not actually called.
I defined a variable justUpdate and when it is TRUE want to stop the program just after function definitions.
ReadInput <- function(...) ...
Analyze <- function(...) ...
WriteOutput <- function(...) ...
if (justUpdate)
stop()
# main body
x <- ReadInput()
y <- Analyze(x)
WriteOutput(y)
I have called stop() function, but the problem is that it prints an error message.
ctrl+c is another option, but I want to stop the source in specific line.
The problem with q() or quit() is that it terminates R session, but I would like to have the R session still open.
As #JoshuaUlrich proposed browser() can be another option, but still not perfect, because the source terminates in a new environment (i.e. the R prompt will change to Browser[1]> rather than >). Still we can press Q to quit it, but I am looking for the straightforward way.
Another option is to use if (! justUpdate) { main body } but it's clearing the problem, not solving it.
Is there any better option?
I found a rather neat solution here. The trick is to turn off all error messages just before calling stop(). The function on.exit() is used to make sure that error messages are turned on again afterwards. The function looks like this:
stop_quietly <- function() {
opt <- options(show.error.messages = FALSE)
on.exit(options(opt))
stop()
}
The first line turns off error messages and stores the old setting to the variable opt. After this line, any error that occurs will not output a message and therfore, also stop() will not cause any message to be printed.
According to the R help,
on.exit records the expression given as its argument as needing to be executed when the current function exits.
The current function is stop_quietly() and it exits when stop() is called. So the last thing that the program does is call options(opt) which will set show.error.messages to the value it had, before stop_quietly() was called (presumably, but not necessarily, TRUE).
There is a nice solution in a mailing list here that defines a stopQuietly function that basically hides the error shown from the stop function:
stopQuietly <- function(...) {
blankMsg <- sprintf("\r%s\r", paste(rep(" ", getOption("width")-1L), collapse=" "));
stop(simpleError(blankMsg));
} # stopQuietly()
> stopQuietly()
I have a similar problem and, based on #VangelisTasoulas answer, I got a simple solution.
Inside functions, I have to check if DB is updated. If it is not, stop the execution.
r=readline(prompt="Is DB updated?(y/n)")
Is DB updated?(y/n)n
if(r != 'y') stop('\r Update DB')
Update DB
Just putting \r in the beginning of the message, overwrite Error: in the message.
You're looking for the function browser.
You can use the following solution to stop an R program without error:
if (justUpdate)
return(cat(".. Your Message .. "))
Just return something at the line you want to quit the function:
f <- function(x, dry=F) {
message("hi1")
if (dry) return(x)
message("hi2")
x <- 2*x
}
y1 <- f(2) # = 4 hi1 hi2
y2 <- f(2, dry=T) # = 2 hi1
In addition to answer from Stibu on Mar 22 '17 at 7:29, if you want to write a message as a part of stop(), this message is not written.
I perceive strange that following two lines have to be used meaning on.exit(options(options(show....))) doesn't work.
opt <- options(show.error.messages = F)
on.exit(options(opt))
I had forgotten the answer to this and needed to look it up and landed here... You posted the hint to the answer in your question...
ctrl+c is another option, but I want to stop the source in specific line.
Signal an error, warning, or message
rlang::inform("Updated Only")
rlang::interrupt()
I've found it good to write a script and run it with source(). In the script, a write exit statements as a special class of error that a tryCatch() can pick up and send back as just a message:
exit <- function(..., .cl = NULL) {
# Use to capture acceptable stop
cond <- structure(
list(.makeMessage(...), .cl),
class = c("exitError", "error", "condition"),
names = c("message", "call")
)
stop(cond)
}
foo <- function() {
exit("quit here")
1
}
tryCatch(
# rather than foo(), you might use source(filename)
foo(),
exitError = function(e) message(e$message)
)
#> quit here
Created on 2022-01-24 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)
You can use with_options() in the withr package to temporarily disable error messages and then you can call stop() directly.
Here is an example:
weird_math <- function(x, y, z) {
if (x > z) {
withr::with_options(
list(show.error.messages = FALSE),
{
print("You can execute other code here if you want")
stop()
}
)
}
# only runs if x <= z
x + y ^ z
}
weird_math(1, 2, 3)
[1] 9
weird_math(3, 2, 1)
[1] "You can execute other code here if you want"
why not just use an if () {} else {}? It's only a couple of characters...
f1 <- function(){}
f2 <- function(){}
if (justUpdate) {
} else {
# main body
}
or even
f1 <- function(){}
f2 <- function(){}
if (!justUpdate) {
# main body
}
The below code work for me stopped without error messages.
opt <- options(show.error.messages = FALSE)
on.exit(options(opt))
break

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