How to let elixir /phoenix communicate async with programs in R

[Stefan Houtzager]

Asked this question also on elixirforum.com (see below). Anyone with R experience in this group that can help? As a first test I would like to call this R program async from elixir, as a test:

divide <- function(x){
  out <- as.integer(x/10)
  Sys.sleep(10)
  return(out)

} 

How can I do this, do you have some code examples? Maybe RServe (https://rforge.net/Rserve/) could be handy to use? I know nothing of R yet, but would like to call R programs built by a collegue.

What would be the alternatives, could porcelain be a good choice?

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OvermindDL1

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If there is a good TCP or Pipe implementation that you could use in R then that would be a great way, or Porcelain if you want the Elixir system to manage the R execution as well.

[OvermindDL1]

RServe looks like it would work, however how does your collegues program want to be called?  Via a shell command?  TCP?  Etc...?

[Stefan Houtzager]

I have to await the answer of my collegue (just mailed him). In the meantime I'm almostly sure we are free in our choice. What would be the options? I think it might be handy in the end if we could execute R-tasks simultaneous, like elixir tasks with a yield_many (Task module) to get the results. 

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Kind regards,

Stefan Houtzager

Houtzager ICT consultancy & development

www.linkedin.com/in/stefanhoutzager

[OvermindDL1]

Elixir/Erlang can support almost any style, but it is definitely a more natural fit for something TCP-based, however if you need to transfer massive amounts of data (megs or more at a time) then a raw open 'Port' would probably be the fastest.

If, for some reason, you needed absolute speed, you could make a C embedded Port (or unsafely, but faster, a C nif) to interact with it, but that is way way way overkill for most purposes.

[Stefan Houtzager]

Thanks, TCP-based would be fine, I'll see what I can find out. I haven't worked with TCP servers before, would http://andrealeopardi.com/posts/handling-tcp-connections-in-elixir/ be a good intro?

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[OvermindDL1]

It looks decent, although very low level.  I'd say learn that article to see how it works, then promptly use another library, like I just found this on hex.pm:  https://hex.pm/packages/teacup  :-)

I also found this, but its had no updates in a half-year, so it may be stable or may be old?  https://hex.pm/packages/gen_listener_tcp

[OvermindDL1]

Though, to be honest, even raw TCP in Elixir is dead-simple.