webserver

Fast, multi-threaded HTTP/HTTPS server for R

This package provides a high-performance web server for R. It serves static files and R functions over HTTP and HTTPS (TLS), including client certificate authentication. It supports TCP ports (IPv4 and IPv6) and local (unix) sockets. Requests are processed by multiple threads and on unix R handlers can be evaluated in forked worker processes (Windows only supports evaluation in the same R process).

CRAN RForge check

Examples

Serve the current directory on http://localhost:8080 (akin to python -m http.server):

Rscript -e 'webserver::simple()'

or on all interfaces on port 8000:

Rscript -e 'webserver::simple("http://*:8000")'

R functions can be served as well, e.g., http://localhost:8080/?name=World with:

webserver::simple(path=NULL, Rfun=function(path, query, ...)
    list(paste("Hello,", query["name"]), "text/plain"))

The function has the same interface as the HTTP handlers of Rserve and the internal R help server, and simple() uses the .http.request() function by default (if it exists) just like Rserve, so existing handlers can be used as-is (use parse.body=FALSE for raw request bodies).

For more control, register the handlers explicitly and start the server. Handlers are tried in the order they were added, so rewrite handlers (which modify the request) go first, e.g., to also serve http://localhost:8080/hello/World:

library(webserver)
addHandler("rewrite", "/hello/?", "/hello?name=$1")
addHandler("rfun", "/hello", function(path, query, ...)
    list(paste("Hello,", query["name"]), "text/plain"))
addHandler("static", "/", path=".", index="index.html")
webstart(8080)

See ?webstart and ?addHandler for details.

Installation

To install the latest release from CRAN, use simply

install.packages("webserver")

For installation of the latest development version, use

install.packages("webserver", repos="https://rforge.net")