A brief survey of R web interfaces
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I’m looking at ways to provide access to R via a web application. First rule: see what’s available first, before you reinvent the wheel. It’s not pretty.
From the R Web Interfaces FAQ:
| Software | Brief notes |
|---|---|
| Rweb | Page last updated 1999. Of the 3 example links on the page one ran very slowly, the second not at all and the third is broken. |
| R-Online | Or rather, not online. Unless this CGI form is the same thing. I tried Example 1, it returned a server error. |
| Rcgi | Links to several CGI forms, none of which worked for me. |
| CGI-based R access | Link did not load. |
| CGIwithR | Package now maintained at Omegahat. Did not attempt installation. Last updated 2005. |
| Rpad | I could not connect to this URL. |
| RApache | The pick of the bunch. Provides server-side access to R through an Apache module. I was able to install RApache on 32-bit (but not 64-bit) Ubuntu 9.10 and get it running. Could use more documentation. |
| Rserve | Serves R via TCP/IP. Last updated 2006. |
| OpenStatServer | Broken link. No longer exists, so far as I can tell. |
| R PHP Online | Link out of date (but you can follow it to the newer page). Last updated 2003, so unlikely to be much use. |
| R-php | Last updated 2006; the example that I tried gave a server error. |
| webbioc | A Bioconductor package. Did not investigate further. |
| Rwui | An application to create R web interfaces. My browser hung at “waiting for cache”. I gave up. |
So, aside from RApache and some very old-fashioned and/or broken CGI scripts, I conclude that there is little interest in writing beautiful, modern statistical web applications (notable exception). Not so much a case of “reinventing” as “inventing”.
Posted in computing, R, research diary, statistics, web resources
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