How to use R with Google Colaboratory?
RJupyter NotebookGoogle ColaboratoryR Problem Overview
Google Colaboratory supports Python version 2.7 and 3.6
I saw an example how to use Swift in Colab a while ago.
Today, I happened to run
!jupyter-kernelspec list
And found a new kernel: IRkernel
Available kernels:
ir /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/ir
python2 /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/python2
python3 /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/python3
swift /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/swift
Is it now possible to use R in Colab as well? No hassle in installing R kernel?
R Solutions
Solution 1 - R
Yes.
For a new R-notebook, use this link. (shorthand is colab.to/r )
You can learn from IRkernel demos, e.g. demo.ipynb
Save a copy in your Google Drive, and make any changes you need.
2 more demos:
- Display.ipynb shows how to display HTML, images.
- Comm_Demo.ipynb shows how to communicate between R and JavaScript.
See more details in IRkernel Github.
Solution 2 - R
In case you want to use Python and R together, you can use R magic for some cells.
# activate R magic
%load_ext rpy2.ipython
Then, whenever you want to use R, you begin the cell with %%R
%%R
x <- 42
print(x)
More details in rpy2 documentation
Solution 3 - R
Open this link in your browser to create a new notebook with R Kernel
https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#create=true&language=r
Solution 4 - R
*****Working as of Friday 13th November 2020
Go this URL https://colab.to/r whilst signed into colab and that should do it.
You can check if R in Runtime -> Change runtime type, but it should already be setup.
To mount google drive:
install.packages("googledrive")
library("googledrive")
if (file.exists("/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/google/colab/_ipython.py")){
install.packages("R.utils")
library("R.utils")
library("httr")
my_check <- function() {return(TRUE)}
reassignInPackage("is_interactive", pkgName = "httr", my_check)
options(rlang_interactive=TRUE)
}
And authenticate google drive
drive_auth(use_oob = TRUE, cache = TRUE)
Solution 5 - R
Update: this doesn't work anymore (july 2020).
The above link on answers above takes directly to R notebook, there you have an option change between R or python. It is strange that Google is changing services just like this. Hence stackoverflow not a great platform to promote tools created by profit mongering/data-selling companies.
Old answer:
As of now if you click at Runtime on menu bar then choose Change Runtime Type, you can choose between R or Python.
Solution 6 - R
To expand on a previous answer, here's how you can move dataframes between the R and Python kernels so you can work with both in the same notebook (for example, if you want to load data in with Pandas, process it with an R package, and then plot it with Bokeh).
# Pandas dataframe to R data frame
!pip3 install rpy2
%load_ext rpy2.ipython
%R -i df
# R data frame to Pandas dataframe
%R seq.data <- read.delim('sequence.index', header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
seq_data = %R seq.data
Solution 7 - R
Another quick way is to replace postix, .ipynb in colab title to .r
Example: change name of Untitled.ipynb to Untitled.r, and everything works perfectly!