Running R Scripts Directly From Dropbox
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I have written a little function that allows users to run R scripts out of Dropbox directly from any location. It was aided by this post on biobucket. The reason I am particularly interested in this feature is because I am often using a server to run my R code. This otherwise would require me to upload my R script directly to the server every time I make a change. However, I can instantly test my code on the server by having it run the code remotely since dropbox is very good at detecting changes and updating its database instantly.
# Evaluate code directly from a dropbox file
dropbox.eval <- function(x, noeval=F) {
require(RCurl)
# Load the file into memory as a text file with getURL
intext <- getURL(paste0("https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/",x),
ssl.verifypeer = FALSE)
# For some reason \r seem to be frequently inserted into
# the script files that I save. They present a problem
# so I remove them using gsub.
intext <- gsub("\r","", intext)
# Evaluate the input file.
if (!noeval) eval(parse(text = intext), envir= .GlobalEnv)
# Finally return the dropbox script as text.
return(intext)
}
dropbox.eval("sh/1fjpw58gko634ye/C74hTEkknP/Demo.R")Highlighted by Pretty R at inside-R.orgI also found that there is a R package built specifically for interfacing with dropbox which looks pretty great at https://github.com/karthikram/rDrop. I have not yet implemented it.
This command can also be found at
https://github.com/EconometricsBySimulation/RConcerto/blob/master/Package.R
I am starting work on a package (RConcerto) meant to provide tools for helping in the production of Concerto online tests. It also includes tools for generating HTML objects. More on this in the future.
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