rscala: Bridge Between ‘R’ and ‘Scala’ with Callbacks

By David B. Dahl (Brigham Young University)

The rscala package provides a bridge between R and Scala, enabling a user to exploit each language’s respective strengths in a single project. The rscala package brings Scala and Java libraries into R with a simple interface. Specifically, Scala classes can be instantiated and methods of Scala classes can be called directly. Furthermore, arbitrary Scala code can be executed on the fly from within R and callbacks to R are supported. Conversely, rscala also enables arbitrary R code to be embedded within a Scala application.

Installation

In R, install the package by executing:

install.packages("rscala")

To install — or check the compatability of your existing installation of — Scala and Java, please execute:

rscala::scalaConfig()

Note that if only want to embed R in a Scala application, you don’t need to install the package. Simply add the following line to the your SBT build.sbt file:

libraryDependencies += "org.ddahl" %% "rscala" % "3.2.19"

Usage guides

The original paper describing the software is:

D. B. Dahl (2020), Integration of R and Scala using rscala, Journal of Statistical Software, 92:4, 1-18, doi:10.18637/jss.v092.i04.

The citation information is available using:

citation("rscala")

An updated version of the paper is available here or as a vignette in R (once the package is installed):

vignette("rscala")

The functionality of the software is also described and demonstrated in the help files:

library(help="rscala")
library(rscala)
example(scala)

Example packages built with rscala

R extensions can be written using this package, as demonstrated by these packages:

Resources