Add the availability to plumber in order to start it without blocking the r process

[andraspetrik]

Add the avaiability to start plumber without blocking like httpuv::startServer()

[schloerke]

@andraspetrik
What are you trying to achieve that isn't already available in the plumber router object?

[blairj09]

This can be accomplished using RStudio background jobs. See example here: https://github.com/sol-eng/background-jobs/tree/master/plumber-job
There's also an associated issue to make this a native part of the RStudio IDE:
rstudio/rstudio#5190

[kurt-o-sys]

I'm want to write some api tests. So, whenever I run the plumber server, the tests hang because it blocks. Is there a way to write tests on plumber-api's ? (If plumber wouldn't be blocking after startup, this would be rather straight forward)

[meztez]

What is done internally is call the Plumber R6 $ methods directly instead of running the server.
Depending on what you want to do this might work. You can look in the testthat folder in tests for the file test-plumber.R

plumber/tests/testthat/test-plumber.R

Line 187 in 43067ff

pr$route(make_req("GET", "/nested/path"), res)

plumber/tests/testthat/helper-mock-request.R

Line 2 in 43067ff

make_req <- function(verb, path, qs="", body=""){

You could do something like that.

pr <- plumb("plumber.R")
req <- #create a mock req object or save one from a sample and load it.
pr$call(req)

It will mostly do the same thing without the running server part like.

[blairj09]

There's an example here that uses callr to run Plumber in the background so that tests can be run against it.

[layik]

Hoping @blairj09 or @schloerke may have a solution. So the "call" method is not the right ("running") way to do this and although I had successfully gone the callr::r_bg way I now get this error from running:

https://github.com/ATFutures/geoplumber/blob/17f07ada3fe47ae81319c49d1299a1c96305aff6/R/plumb.R#L69

callr subprocess failed: "rs_plumberviewer" not available for .Call() for package "(embedding)"

Will update this closed ticket if I find the cause/fix myself. Thanks

[meztez]

The visual documentation is now enabled in interactive mode. You are probably running inside RStudio and your plumber option options("plumber.swagger.url") is set to call rs_plumberViewer.

You could disable the callback or disable the visual documentation.

That would be my hypothesis as rs_plumberviewer is what RStudio use to open plumber visual documentation.

[meztez]

f <- function(s, p, h) s$run(port = p, host = h)

replace with below to set docs callback to null (visual documentation will still be available)

f <- function(s, p, h) { s$setDocsCallback(); s$run(port = p, host = h)}

or to remove visual documentation entirely

f <- function(s, p, h) { s$setDocs(FALSE); s$run(port = p, host = h)}

[layik]

Thank you very much @meztez! Can I help documenting this somewhere better for everyone else? Apologies for the single letter codes will revamp it now that I think plumber is stable to move forward.

[meztez]

This is more of an RStudio problem though... don't know where you would document that.

See third breaking change : https://www.rplumber.io/news/index.html#breaking-changes

[layik]

Maybe I need to understand the actual issue rather than jumping to contribute. Thanks again @meztez