generated using jug version r library(jug);sessionInfo()$otherPkgs$jug$Version
library(jug) jug() %>% get("/", function(req, res, err){ "Hello World!" }) %>% simple_error_handler_json() %>% serve_it()
Serving the jug at http://127.0.0.1:8080
jug is a small web development framework for R which relies heavily upon the httpuv
package. It's main focus is to make building APIs for your code as easy as possible.
jug is not supposed to be either an especially performant nor an uber stable web framework. Other tools (and languages) might be more suited for that. It's main focus is to easily allow you to create APIs for your R code. However, the flexibility of jug means that, in theory, you could built an extensive web framework with it.
To install the latest version use devtools
:
devtools::install_github("Bart6114/jug")
Or install the CRAN version:
install.packags("jug")
Load the library:
library(jug)
Everything starts with a jug instance. This instance is created by simply calling jug()
:
jug()
jug is made to work closely with the piping functionality of magrittr
(%>%
). The configuration of the jug instance is set up by piping the instance through the various functions explained below.
In terms of middleware, jug somewhat follows the specification of middleware by Express
. In jug, middleware is a function with access to the request (req
), response (res
) and error (err
) object.
Multiple middlewares can be defined. The order in which the middlewares are added matters. A request will start with being passed through the first middleware added (more specifically the functions specified in it - see next paragraph). It will continue to be passed through the added middlewares until a middleware does not return NULL
(note: if a value is set using e.g. res$json("foo")
the body will not be NULL
). Whatever will be passed by that middleware will be set as the response body.
Most middleware will accept a func
or ...
argument to which respectively a function or multiple functions can be passed. If multiple functions are passed; the order in which they are passed will be respected when processing a request. To each function the req
, res
and err
objects will be passed (and they thus should accept them).
The use
function is a method insensitive middleware specifier. While it is method insensitive, it can be bound to a specific path. If the path
argument (accepts a regex string with grepl
setting perl=TRUE
) is set to NULL
it also becomes path insensitive and will process every request.
A path insensitive example:
jug() %>% use(path = NULL, function(req, res, err){ "test 1,2,3!" }) %>% serve_it()
$ curl 127.0.0.1:8080/xyz test 1,2,3!
The same example, but path sensitive:
jug() %>% use(path = "/", function(req, res, err){ "test 1,2,3!" }) %>% serve_it()
$ curl 127.0.0.1:8080/xyz curl: (52) Empty reply from server $ curl 127.0.0.1:8080 test 1,2,3!
It is however possible to specify a method to bind to using use
(check out ?use
), this way you can process request methods for which no prespecified middlewares exist.
Note that in the above example errors / missing route handling is missing (the server might crash / not respond), more on that later.
In the same style as the request method insensitive middleware, there is request method sensitive middleware available. More specifically, you can use the get
, post
, put
and delete
functions.
This type of middleware is bound to a path using the path
argument. If path
is set to NULL
it will bind to every request to the path, given that it is of the corresponding request method.
jug() %>% get(path = "/", function(req, res, err){ "get test 1,2,3!" }) %>% serve_it()
$ curl 127.0.0.1:8080 get test 1,2,3!
Middlewares are meant to be chained, so to bind different functions to different paths:
jug() %>% get(path = "/", function(req, res, err){ "get test 1,2,3 on path /" }) %>% get(path = "/my_path", function(req, res, err){ "get test 1,2,3 on path /my_path" }) %>% serve_it()
$ curl 127.0.0.1:8080 get test 1,2,3 on path / $ curl 127.0.0.1:8080/my_path get test 1,2,3 on path /my_path
By default all middleware convenience function bind to the http protocol. You can however access the jug server through websocket by using the websocket sensitive middleware function ws
. Below an example echo'ing the incoming message.
jug() %>% ws("/echo_message", function(binary, message, res, err){ message }) %>% serve_it()
Opening a connection to ws://127.0.0.1:8080/echo_message
and sending e.g. the message test
to it will then return the value test
.
Please note that websocket support is experimental at this stage.
In order to make you code more modular, you can include elsewhere defined middleware chains into your jug instance. To do this you can use a combination of the collector()
and include()
functions.
Below a collector
is defined locally (in the same R script) and include
d.
collected_mw<- collector() %>% get("/", function(req,res,err){ return("test") }) res<-jug() %>% include(collected_mw) %>% serve_it()
However, it is also possible to include
a collector
that is defined in another .R file.
Let's say below is the file my_middlewares.R
:
library(jug) collected_mw<- collector() %>% get("/", function(req,res,err){ return("test2") })
We can include it as follows:
res<-jug() %>% include(collected_mw, "my_middlewares.R") %>% serve_it()
A simple error handling middleware (simple_error_handler
/ simple_error_handler_json
) which catches unbound paths and func
evaluation errors. If you do not implement a custom error handler, I suggest you add either of these to your jug instance. The simple_error_handler
returns an HTML error page while the simple_error_handler_json
returns a JSON message.
jug() %>% simple_error_handler() %>% serve_it()
$ curl 127.0.0.1:8080 <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Not found</title> </head> <body> <p>No handler bound to path</p> </body> </html>
If you want to implement your own custom error handling just have a look at the code of these simple error handling middlewares.
Please note that generally you would like the error handler middleware to be attached to the jug instance after all other middleware has been specified.
The main reason jug was created is to easily allow access to your own custom R functions. The convenience function decorate
is built especially for this purpose.
If you decorate
your own function it will translate all arguments passed in the query string of the request as arguments to your function. It will also pass all headers to the function as arguments.
If your function does not accept a ...
argument, all query/header parameters that are not explicitly requested by your function are dropped. If your function requests a req
, res
or err
argument (or ...
) the corresponding objects will be passed.
say_hello<-function(name){paste("hello",name,"!")} jug() %>% get("/", decorate(say_hello)) %>% serve_it()
If in the above, you pass a parameter name
through either the query string or as a header in the GET request, it will return as in the example below.
$ curl 127.0.0.1:8080/?name=Bart hello Bart !
The serve_static_file
middleware allows for serving static files.
jug() %>% serve_static_files() %>% serve_it()
The default root directory is the one returned by getwd()
but can be specified by providing a root_path
argument to the serve_static_files
middleware. It transforms a bare /
path to index.html
.
Aside from development, I do not recommend using jug to serve static files.
CORS functionality is introduced by the cors()
middleware function.
Consider the following example.
jug() %>% cors() %>% get("/", function(req, res, err){ "Hello World!" }) %>% serve_it()
$ curl -v 127.0.0.1:8080/ * Trying 127.0.0.1... * Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 8080 (#0) > GET / HTTP/1.1 > Host: 127.0.0.1:8080 > User-Agent: curl/7.43.0 > Accept: */* > < HTTP/1.1 200 OK < Content-Type: text/html < Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * < Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,PUT,OPTIONS,DELETE,PATCH < Content-Length: 12 < * Connection #0 to host 127.0.0.1 left intact
As you see this adds some default CORS-headers. Check out ?cors
for the configuration options, note that you can also add CORS headers to a specific path by specifying the path
parameter.
Currently there is only built-in support for basic authentication (check: https://www.httpwatch.com/httpgallery/authentication/) through the auth_basic
middleware function. The middleware will check the request for a valid username / password combination. If an invalid combination is passed, it will return a 401 status, a WWW-Authenticate
header and a text body which states that there was an authentication error.
First you will need to define a function that accepts username
and password
arguments. The funtion should return TRUE
if the combination is valid and FALSE
if the combination is invalid. A dummy example is shown below. Note, that this function could also check e.g. a database to validate the combo.
# dummy account checker account_checker <- function(username, password){ # do something to verify the username and password and return TRUE if combination OK all(username == "test_user", password == "test_password") }
Next you need to instantiate the auth_basic
middleware in you middleware chain. The auth_basic
function accepts as first parameter the username/password validation function. Below two examples are given. The first one shows how to do authentication for a specific path (/test
).
jug() %>% get("/", function(req, res, err){ "/ req" }) %>% get("/test", auth_basic(account_checker), function(req, res, err){ "/test req" }) %>% serve_it()
The second example below shows how to activate basic authentication for all paths in the jug instance.
jug() %>% use(NULL, auth_basic(account_checker)) %>% get("/", function(req, res, err){ "/ req" }) %>% serve_it()
req
) objectThe req
object contains the request specifications. It has different attributes:
req$params
a named list of the parameters passed by either the query string, a JSON body, URL parameters or a multipart formreq$path
the request pathreq$method
the request methodreq$raw
the raw request object as passsed by httpuv
req$body
the full request body as a character stringreq$protocol
either http
or websocket
req$headers
a named list of the headers in the request (as lowercase and stripped from the HTTP_
prefix provided by the underlying httpuv
framework)It has the following functions attached to it:
req$get_header(key)
returns the value associated to the specified key in the request (no need to worry about the HTTP_
prefix)req$set_header(key, value)
allows to set / alter a header while processing the request (can be useful to pass data to the next middleware)req$attach(key, value)
attach a variable to req$params
res
) objectThe res
object contains the response specifications. It has different attributes:
res$headers
a named list of the set headersres$status
the status of the response (defaults to 200)res$body
the body of the response (is automatically set to be the content of the not NULL
returning middleware or by methods such as res$json()
)It also has a set of functions:
res$set_header(key, value)
set a custom headerres$content_type(type)
set your own content type (MIME)res$set_status(status)
set the status of the responseres$text(body)
to explicitely set the body of the responseres$json(obj, auto_unbox=TRUE)
converts an object to JSON, sets it as the body and set the correct content typeres$plot(plot_obj, base64=TRUE)
convenience function to return a plot object as the response body, the returned plot can either be a base64 representation of the image (default) or the actual binary dataerr
) objectThe err
object contains a list of errors, accessible through err$errrors
. You can add an error to this list by calling err$set(error)
. The error will be converted to a character.
Refer to the "Error handling" paragraph for more details.
The path parameter in the get
, post
, ... functions are processed as being regex patterns.
If there are named capture groups in the path definition, they will be attached to the req$params
object. For example the pattern /test/(?<id>.*)/(?<id2>.*)
will result in the variables id
and id2
(with their respective values) being bound to the req$params
object.
If a path pattern is not started with a start of string ^
regex token or ended with an end of string token $
, these will be explicitely inserted at respectively the beginning and end of the path pattern specification. For example the path pattern /
will be converted to ^/$
.
Simply call serve_it()
at the end of your piping chain (see Hello World! example).
A minimal TODO app built in Angular with a jug backend.
Clone the repository to check it out: github.com/Bart6114/jug-crud-example
Let's train (in a very simplistic way) a linear regression model on the mtcars
dataset and assume that our objective is to predict the miles per gallon or mpg
variable based on the inputs gear
and hp
.
head(mtcars) mpg_model<- lm(mpg~gear+hp, data=mtcars) summary(mpg_model)
As we went through a lot of hard work to end up with this model (/s), we now want to expose it through an API. This way we allow other people or applications to make predictions using this model.
As a first step we need to build a minimal prediction function.
predict_mpg <- function(gear, hp){ predict(mpg_model, newdata = data.frame(gear=as.numeric(gear), hp=as.numeric(hp)))[[1]] }
We can test the function by supplying the gear
and hp
arguments.
predict_mpg(gear = 4, hp = 80)
Now, to expose this function as a we API, we need to build a jug
instance. We can use the built-in decorate
middleware to ease the integration of the predict_mpg
function. Below, a minimal example is shown.
jug() %>% post("/predict-mpg", decorate(predict_mpg)) %>% simple_error_handler_json() %>% serve_it()
Serving the jug at http://127.0.0.1:8080
We can now send a http POST request to the http://127.0.0.1:8080/predict-mpg
url and it will return the predicted value! It works out of the box with either the parameters in a JSON body, as multipart/form-data
or as a x-www-form-urlencoded
.
JSON body
curl -X POST \ http://127.0.0.1:8080/predict-mpg \ -H 'content-type: application/json' \ -d '{"hp": 80, "gear": 4}'
multipart form
curl -X POST \ http://127.0.0.1:8080/predict-mpg \ -H 'content-type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW' \ -F hp=80 \ -F gear=4
urlencode form
curl -X POST \ http://127.0.0.1:8080/predict-mpg \ -H 'content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \ -d 'gear=4&hp=80'
Any scripts or data that you put into this service are public.
Add the following code to your website.
For more information on customizing the embed code, read Embedding Snippets.