So you are interested in web API's but don't know where to start as an R user. One launchpad is the plumber library, which advertises itself as the tool that "gives you the ability to automatically generate and serve an HTTP API from R functions using the annotations in the R documenation around your functions.".

In this brief document, my goals are threefold. First, I will walk you through a boilerplate example expertly lifted from the plumber documentation. Next, I will lift an example from a demonstrate I did years ago for the CSG Justice Center. Finally, I will set up some resources for those interested in diving deeper into the subject of building web API's with plumber.

Before you get started, install and launch the tool:

install.packages("plumber")

Assuming you did not get any catastrophic error messages when running the command above, your are now ready to move forward with this walkthrough 🚀.

If your curiosity has been piqued, you've probably already googled the term "R plumber" and probably found the documentation expertly put together by the package authors.

I have created a small example on this repo largely to highlight a couple of ideas. You will find those under the plumber.R file.

To run it, clone it. Then use the following commands:

library(plumber)
root <- pr('plumber.R')
pr_run(root, port = 8000)

Check it out with CURL:

curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/echo

With Swagger:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/__docs__/

Or your browser!

This section is under construction 🚧... I mostly copied what was done here (plus or minus some Git)

Funny enough I had put something together for my first call with CSG Justice Center. You can find that here.