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("remotes")
remotes::install_github("dbdahl/rscala/R/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"

Or if you're managing dependencies with Maven, you may add the following to your pom.xml file, replacing the version numbers for Scala and for this library as appropriate.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.ddahl</groupId>
    <artifactId>rscala_2.13</artifactId>
    <version>3.2.19</version>
</dependency>

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.

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:

• aibd
• shallot
• bamboo

Resources

• Vignette describing the package usage.
• Git repository containing source code and build & test scripts.
• Scaladoc for RClient class to access R from Scala.