Dynamically create R graphics for webpage

Question

I've spent a few weeks learning some R and I'm floored at just how slick and powerful it is. I'm using it to plot some data returned from an SQL query, and I'd like to be able to share those plots with others I work with through a web portal.

I realize I can create a cron job to run the R scripts on the webserver to create the plots daily to be viewed from the website as images. But is there any way I can set things up such that the images are created only when the user views the page? That way I could make a web interface that lets the user select date ranges, etc for the SQL query. (and then have R analyse the data and plot it)

Any advice?

Answer 1

I don't do a lot of dynamic html stuff with R but you could start with either one of these

• rapache: R inside Apache
• Rpad: Web-based R
• R FAQ on Web interfaces

Also of interest may be brew for mixing R text and R code in web templates.

Answer 2

I like to call R to do statistical analysis from Python driven websites with rpy2.

Answer 3

Beyond the other suggestions, you can use JRI and call R from Java.

Another nice option is to use the mediawiki plugin (read about it on the R-Wiki). It's very straightforward and gives you a simple markup for R.