A socket server allows to connect clients to R.
The SciViews svSocket package provides a stateful, multi-client and preemptive socket server. Socket transaction are operational even when R is busy in its main event loop (calculation done at the prompt). This R socket server uses the excellent asynchronous socket ports management by Tcl, and thus, it needs a working version of Tcl/Tk (>= 8.4) and of the tcltk R package.
A particular effort has been made to handle requests the same way as if they
where introduced at the command prompt, including presentation of the output.
However, the server sends results back to the client only at the end of the
computations. It means that any interaction during computation (for instance,
using scan(), browser(), or par(ask = TRUE) is not echoed in the client
on due time. If you parameterize the socket server to echo commands in the R
console, such interaction would be possible from there. Another option is to
run R in non-interactive mode.
Although initially designed to server GUI clients, the R socket server can
also be used to exchange data between separate R processes. The
eval_socket_server() function is particularly useful for this. Note,
however, that R objects are serialized into a text (i.e., using dump())
format, currently. It means that the transfer of large object is not as
efficient as, say Rserver (Rserver exchanges R objects in binary format,
but Rserver is not stateful, clients do not share the same global workspace
and it does not allow concurrent use of the command prompt).
See start_socket_server() and process_socket_server() for further
implementation details.
Useful links: