How should I do rapid GUI development for R and Octave methods (possibly with Python)?

Question

We are a medium-sized academic research lab whose main outputs are new statistical methods for analyzing large datasets. We generally develop in R and MATLAB/Octave.

We

Answer 1

For R and Python integration you might also want to have a look at

• pyRserve
• PypeR [more in the paper]

Answer 2

I've been looking for something similar - simple rapid GUI in R. It seems there's a new alternative from RStudio guys.

Shiny should be sufficient for small web interfaces without much coding. Seems like a viable option if you need a simple input/output style of UI.

Answer 3

Why not continue to develop directly in R? There are a number of packages that allow you to develop GUIs (gWidgets RGtk, tcl/tk, RQt, Rwxwidgets, rjava) or web applications.

Answer 4

I'd go with Python and PyQt4 for the UI, and use Rpy to interface to R.

There's the QtDesigner for interface designing and you can generate python from that. QtAssistant gives you a fully hyperlinked documentation set for Qt which is the best I've ever used.

Well worth it!

Answer 5

I haven't tried directly connecting Octave with Python beyond setting up Octave apps as a server and having a Python client call in, but I've had some luck integrating R with Python courtesy RPy. In some of our applications we build e.g. a wxPython + matplotlib Python frontend, and call the R scripts directly through RPy.

Answer 6

You might try looking at RedR, which lets you wrap R packages in a Python GUI.