Introduction

Date

Dec 13, 2014

Authors

Jason E. Aten, Ph.D.

Contact

j.e.aten@gmail.com

Web site

http://github.com/glycerine/nanomsgardvark

License

GPL-3 for nanomsgardvark. MIT for nanomsg.

Purpose

nanomsgardvark is an R binding for nanomsg (http://nanomsg.org/).

nanomsgardvark was initially derived from the rzmq bindings for ZeroMQ by Whit Armstrong (https://github.com/armstrtw/rzmq). While nanomsgardvark has diverged significantly, some (most) of the docs are yet to be ported from zmq to nanomsg yet. In general the nanomsgardvark calls match the original nanomsg C calls exactly, so the nanomsg documentation (http://nanomsg.org/documentation.html) is extremely relevant and most useful.

Update: I originally named this project rnanomsg, before I realized that Matt Howlett had already started on R bindings (https://github.com/mhowlett/rnanomsg). I renamed the project nanomsgardvark after this discovery.

Features

nanomsgardvark is a network transport (over nanomsg) for serialized R (or other data) objects.

Usage

A minimal example of sending code for remote execution.

execute this R script on the remote server:

#!/usr/bin/env Rscript
library(nanomsgardvark)
s.rep <- nn.socket(nn.AF_SP, nn.REP)
nn.clearerr()
rc = nn.bind(s.rep,"tcp://*:5555")
if (nn.is.bind.err(rc)) {
   stop(paste("problem with nn.bind", nn.strerror()))
}
while(1) {
    nn.clearerr()
    msg = nn.recv(s.rep);
    if (nn.is.recv.err(msg)) {
       stop(paste("problem with nn.recv", nn.strerror()))
    }
    fun <- msg$fun
    args <- msg$args
    print(args)
    ans <- do.call(fun,args)
    nn.clearerr()
    rc = nn.send(s.rep,ans);
    if (nn.is.send.err(rc)) {
       stop(paste("problem with nn.send", nn.strerror()))    
    }
}
# when you are done, remember to:
nn.close(s.rep)

and execute this bit locally:

library(nanomsgardvark)

remote.exec <- function(socket,fun,...) {
    rc = nn.send(socket,data=list(fun=fun,args=list(...)))
    nn.recv(socket)
}

s.req <- nn.socket(nn.AF_SP, nn.REQ)

nn.clearerr()
rc = nn.connect(s.req,"tcp://localhost:5555")
if (nn.is.connect.err(rc)) {
   stop(paste("problem with nn.connect", nn.strerror()))
}
ans <- remote.exec(s.req,sqrt,10000)

# when done, remember to
nn.close(s.req)