R-via-REST
November 10, 2011 1:09 PM   Subscribe

OpenCPU provides a RESTful interface to the popular open-source statistical package R, enabling the user to perform calculations and create publication-quality or web-embeddable visualizations via standard web requests.
posted by Blazecock Pileon (17 comments total) 50 users marked this as a favorite
 
They have a very informative FAQ.
posted by bonehead at 1:12 PM on November 10, 2011


Try the documentation.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:13 PM on November 10, 2011


That looks quite useful, but it's not REST, it's RPC. About as pure an example of RPC as you'll find, in fact.

It's not a bad thing that it's not REST (RPC maps much more clearly to what it's doing), it's just a fact.
posted by cdward at 1:20 PM on November 10, 2011 [2 favorites]


More examples would be great. I wonder how easy it would be to use it to make an online R REPL.
posted by cdward at 1:22 PM on November 10, 2011


REST would be awesome for R.

/1/2/3/5/22/496/{...}/3882/squares/sum/plot
posted by felix at 1:25 PM on November 10, 2011 [2 favorites]


Cool!  Yey ponies!
posted by jeffburdges at 1:26 PM on November 10, 2011


Huh. Looks like you can work with canned data or work with your own data by uploading files.

....

OK, so, probably this isn't any kind of scheme to get ridiculous people to upload sensitive data files to their servers. But this plus a quick scan of each uploaded file for credit card numbers and SSNs would be a really low-effort little scam.
posted by gurple at 3:13 PM on November 10, 2011


Between this and yahoo pipes, you can do some pretty amazing stuff using just html and javascript (jQuery). No need for php/asp hosting.
posted by kzin602 at 3:35 PM on November 10, 2011


Revolution Analytics blog post about OpenCPU.

Are they planning to release a package to set up your own OpenCPU server/cluster? This seems like a nice alternative to Rpy or Rweb, but lots of problem sets (e.g. genomics) will require custom packages and aren't amenable to large dataset transfers.
posted by benzenedream at 3:41 PM on November 10, 2011 [1 favorite]


Another R project I've become completely smitten with over the last few weeks is R Studio - a very sweet web-based interface for R that I've installed and am encouraging my students to use. Screenshot - all in the browser, and it's got a nicer interface than RGui or RKward.
posted by Jimbob at 4:08 PM on November 10, 2011 [6 favorites]


it's not REST, it's RPC

Tangential: Everything You Know About REST Is Wrong.
posted by weston at 4:31 PM on November 10, 2011 [4 favorites]


I just discovered Revolution Analytics this week after dusting off the old R install for a work project. Wonderful site, and it's amazing what some of the R and data geeks are doing out there right now. Just browsing through the October Roundup wasted way too much time.
posted by formless at 5:27 PM on November 10, 2011


That's kind of interesting; I just don't see what the use of it is. People who want to play with R code I write can run it themselves without needing to learn yet another interface. The selling point of reproducability is misplaced, since they are highly likely to fail as an enterprise. I guess doing html embedding and thier interface will be easier for some people than sweave, or static code plus html.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 5:31 PM on November 10, 2011


I thought it was interesting initially as a better way of doing Google Charts, one that makes nicer and higher quality graphs, while also rendering lower-quality versions that can sit comfortably in a web page/lab manual.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:34 PM on November 10, 2011


Interesting that the images on the front page are almost all targeted at bio/pharma/neurosci.
posted by maryr at 8:42 PM on November 10, 2011


Interesting that the images on the front page are almost all targeted at bio/pharma/neurosci.

Welcome to the ads in every interdisciplinary science magazine/journal for the last 20 years. I'm an ecologist, and I get postcards advertising molecular biology machines in my mailbox...
posted by Jimbob at 11:54 PM on November 10, 2011


Would be nice if the front page loaded.
posted by taursir at 10:18 AM on November 11, 2011


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