rCharts
rCharts is an R package to create, customize and publish interactive javascript visualizations from R using a familiar lattice style plotting interface. It has been created by
Ramnath Vaidyanathan. See more here:
http://rcharts.io/
Below you will find a series of examples of nice charts using
rCharts and the corresponding javascript library used in each case.
Page contents:
Introduction
For these examples to work in a website, you need to change the location of the library they look for. By default they are set to use the library included in the R package rCharts, but the webserver usually can't access directly those libraries, since they are out of its reach. To avoid this issue, we can create an alias in the apache configuration for the website.
You need to open the apache configuration file, whch might be located at
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default (adapt to your case)
Command to open the file for edition in a shell as root
Copy to clipboard
nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
If you have Apache 2.2 (e.g. in Ubuntu 12.04 servers):
Portion to add to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default or equivalent for your site with Apache 2.2
Copy to clipboard
Alias /rcharts_libraries/ "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rCharts/libraries/"
<Directory "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rCharts/libraries/">
Options All
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
If you have Apache 2.4 (e.g. in Ubuntu 12.04 servers):
Portion to add to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default or equivalent for your site with Apache 2.4
Copy to clipboard
Alias /rcharts_libraries/ "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rCharts/libraries/"
<Directory "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rCharts/libraries/">
Options All
AllowOverride All
#Order allow,deny
#Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory>
Then you can save it (-+Ctrl+X+- in nano editor)
The whole configuration file for the site should look like the example below in Apache 2.4 (adapt it to your case):
Example of configuration file for the website
Copy to clipboard
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
# Order allow,deny
Satisfy Any
#Order allow,deny
#Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory>
Alias /rcharts_libraries/ "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rCharts/libraries/"
<Directory "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rCharts/libraries/">
Options All
AllowOverride All
#Order allow,deny
#Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
#Order allow,deny
#Allow from all
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Then restart the webserver (adapt to your case):
Command to restart apache2 in GNU/Linux boxes as root
Copy to clipboard
service apache2 restart
At this time you can already use the javascript and css files provided in the package rCharts from your R scripts in Tiki, with the base url
http://example.com/rcharts_libraries/
Tweaks for Apache 2.4
If you have the webserver Apache 2.4 (likely if you have Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, for instance), the you need to adjust your vhost:
First: +/- on Options:
Some Options parameters needs the +/- syntax.
Read more here. This might be especially important when mixing +/- on some directives (read the previous link to see more).
Change:
Copy to clipboard
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
to:
Copy to clipboard
Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
1.1.1.1.2. Second: Allow/Deny
Apache now does access control via
mod_authz_host
Change:
Copy to clipboard
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
to:
Copy to clipboard
Require all granted
Some more info here on
upgrading from Apache 2.2 to 2.4.
Examples
Credits
Most of the implementation in
rCharts seems to be inspired by
rHighcharts and
rVega. The author have reused some code from these packages verbatim, and would like to acknowledge the efforts of its corresponding author
Thomas Reinholdsson.
License
rCharts is licensed under the MIT License. However, the Polycharts JavaScript library that is included in this package is not free for commercial use, and is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution & Non-commercial. Read more about its license at
http://polychart.com/js/license.