Sending CSV via web to R and sending results back

Question

I would like to be able to have an API system, in which a POST message that contains a csv file is sent to a server/webserver/domain name. It is used as an input for an R function, and then outputs a value which is set back to the sender of the POST message.

One of the issues I have is that most of the solutions I have seen such as rApache(http://rapache.net/) invoke R to run a script, and take back the output. The problem is that my R script also loads from disk some very large data files, which are used as further inputs in order to create the final output.

If running R from the console, with the large data files already loaded as well as all the relevant libraries, the final part of loading up the user input csv, running the function and creating an output is reasonably quick. I.e. for each POST request, it seems highly inefficient to keep re-invoking R loading all relevant files and then closing it after creating the output. I.e. having R constantly running with all the relevant files and libraries and finally only loading in the given CSV file to run the final calculations seems much more efficient...Is there a way to do this?

Shiny (http://shiny.rstudio.com/) looks like a close solution since it always has R running in the background and may be able to take in POST requests, but it also has a lot of unnecessary overhead which probably makes it too inefficient for my purposes.

Also will this method be able to handle many POST messages coming in simultaneously?

As always any help is always much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

FastRWeb can accept POST requests and may be what you are looking for.