Skip to content

Link between Qt GUI and R

9 messages · Simon Urbanek, Dirk Eddelbuettel, Barry Rowlingson +3 more

Original
typhoong
# 
hi, 

i want to build a Qt front-end GUI which communicates with R, and i am not
sure what i should use for the interface. There seems to be many ways:
R.dll, Rinside, Rcpp, RQt, Rtools... . what is the best way? please advice.

basically what i want to do is that, the Qt GUI will allow users to make
selection and enter numbers, these inputs will be fed to R, already written
.R files will perform the calculations, the calculation results
(graphs/numbers) to be fed back and display in the GUI.

graham



--
View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Link-between-Qt-GUI-and-R-tp3804976p3804976.html
Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Simon Urbanek
#
On Sep 11, 2011, at 6:30 AM, typhoong wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I think qtgui already provides that ... but I didnt' test it myself ...

Cheers,
Simon

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Dirk Eddelbuettel
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 11 September 2011 at 03:30, typhoong wrote:

        
| hi, 
| 
| i want to build a Qt front-end GUI which communicates with R, and i am not
| sure what i should use for the interface. There seems to be many ways:
| R.dll, Rinside, Rcpp, RQt, Rtools... . what is the best way? please advice.
| 
| basically what i want to do is that, the Qt GUI will allow users to make
| selection and enter numbers, these inputs will be fed to R, already written
| .R files will perform the calculations, the calculation results
| (graphs/numbers) to be fed back and display in the GUI.

There is a complete (and working :) example in the RInside package. The
design used in that application is to have a main C++ program (written with
Qt) with happens to 'have R inside' --- which Rcpp and RInside facilitate.

RInside is on CRAN as well as on my site at

   http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/rinside.html

and I blogged about this example at

   http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2011/03/25#rinside_and_qt

As Simom mentioned, you can go the other way with keeping R as the core part
and extending via R via the qtbase / qtgui / ... project inside the GGobi
sources on github:

   https://github.com/ggobi

Dirk

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Barry Rowlingson
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 11:30 AM, typhoong <graham.li at eurus-energy.com> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Another way is to write the Qt GUI code in Python using the PyQt4
classes, then use RPy to call the required R functionality, get the
results back, slap them into the GUI.

If you can program in Python or want to learn it then its the best way by far :)

Barry

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        
      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Barry Rowlingson
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 2:00 AM, typhoong <graham.li at eurus-energy.com> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I said that conditional on you knowing or wanting to learn Python.
Python interacts with Qt in much the same way as C++ interacts with
it, but without the annoying compile and link steps of C++ (Python is
an interpreted language). Qt was designed to work with C++, and so
development with Python and C++ should be faster than most other Qt
interfaces.

So if you already know Python, and your R scripts are already in the
can ready to go, there's less point learning, or even constructing,
some R-Qt interface than using the well-established and robust
Python-Qt interface.

Barry

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      typhoong
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
hi Barry thanks for your explanation. 

actually i don't know much about python, also i know nothing about C++, but
i am willing to learn.

i had a look at the Rpy documentation, it looks quite good. I can see you
can use R functions within Python. However, i don't really want to do that
unless it is necessary, because all my codes necessary for calculation are
already written in R ! 

I am not sure but I guess it is possible to get the numerical inputs from
the GUI, initiate the already written R codes (dot R files) to calculate and
produce the graphs/number, feed it back to Python/PyQt, and finally display
in the GUI. Is that possible? 

graham 

--
View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Link-between-Qt-GUI-and-R-tp3804976p3807563.html
Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      j verzani
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Barry Rowlingson <b.rowlingson <at> lancaster.ac.uk> writes:

            

      
      
      
    

        
If you don't know python, there is no need to construct an R-Qt interface, there
already is one. Take a look at: https://github.com/ggobi/ for the package 
qtbase and friends. There is some great work there.  (Simon referenced this
 earlier in this thread) For a simpler interface, there is also the gWidgetsQt 
package on r-forge (https://r-forge.r-project.org/R/?group_id=761).

--John