How to start Rserve automatically from Java?

Question

I am writing a Java application in IntelliJ IDE. The application used Rserve package to connect to R and perform some functions. When I want to run my code for the first time, I have to launch R in the command line and start the Rserve as a daemon, which looks something like this:

R
library(Rserve)
Rserve()

After doing this, I can easily access all the function in R without any errors. However, since this Java code would be bundled as an executable file, so is there a way that Rserve() is invoked automatically as soon as the code is run so that I have to skip this manual step of starting Rserve using the command line?

Answer 1

Here is the code for the Class I wrote to get Rserve working from Java

public class InvokeRserve {
    public static void invoke() {
        String s;

        try {

            // run the Unix ""R CMD RServe --vanilla"" command
            // using the Runtime exec method:
            Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("R CMD RServe --vanilla");

            BufferedReader stdInput = new BufferedReader(new
                    InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));

            BufferedReader stdError = new BufferedReader(new
                    InputStreamReader(p.getErrorStream()));

            // read the output from the command
            System.out.println("Here is the standard output of the command:\n");
            while ((s = stdInput.readLine()) != null) {
                System.out.println(s);
            }

            // read any errors from the attempted command
            System.out.println("Here is the standard error of the command (if any):\n");
            while ((s = stdError.readLine()) != null) {
                System.out.println(s);
            }

          //  System.exit(0);

        }
        catch (IOException e) {
            System.out.println("exception happened - here's what I know: ");
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(-1);
        }
    }
}