LookR

Overview

LookR is an open-source R library that provides the user an interface from the R Console or command line to the Looker API (3.0). The API methods are determined dynamically by a Swagger JSON file available on a given Looker instance. All client methods are written in Java and called from R using the rJava library.

OSX Installation

The LookR library is not distributed on CRAN; instead, one must build directly from source. Run the following commands in the R console or command-line client.

install.packages("devtools")
library("devtools")
install_github("looker/lookr")	# to get upstream changes, run this command periodically

Ubuntu Installation

Preliminaries

Note: I am testing this in an virtual environment that's running Ubuntu 14.04. Make sure Apt is installed. Open up a terminal window and type

apt

You should see something like this:

If not, try installing Apt referencing Step 1 from here.

Java Setup

Determine which Java version you have running (LookR has only been tested on Java 7 and 8):

java -version

If you don't have Java installed or you think it might be best to upgrade, run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Once you have a JRE and Java SDK installed, confirm that the necessary Java environmental variables are set:

echo $JAVA_HOME

If there are no results, run:

export JAVA_HOME=$(readlink -f /usr/bin/javac | sed "s:/bin/javac::")

export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

Create a Java config file for R:

sudo vi /etc/ld.so.conf.d/java.conf

Then paste /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/lib/amd64 and /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/lib/amd64/server into that file and save it.

Set the shared library variable:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/amd64:$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/amd64/server

Set up R's Java config file:

sudo R CMD javareconf

R Setup

Note that LookR requires R version 3.2 or later.

Install R base:

sudo apt-get -y install r-base

Install rJava:

sudo apt-get install r-cran-rjava

Install RJSONIO:

sudo apt-get install r-cran-RJSONIO

Install curl utilities for future devtools support:

sudo apt-get -y build-dep libcurl4-gnutls-dev

sudo apt-get -y install libcurl4-gnutls-dev

Enter the R command-line client:

Install devtools:

install.packages("devtools")

Install LookR:

library("devtools")
install_github("looker/lookr")

Usage

# preliminaires #
library("devtools")
library("LookR")

# setting up the client and authenticating (id and secret are available on your Looker instance)
looker_setup(	id = "myapi3id",
				secret = "myapi3secret",
				api_path = "https://mylookerendpoint.com:19999/api/3.0"
)

# running a Look by its look_id
my_look <- run_look(2039)

# running an inline query by providing query components (note: model, view, and fields are required parameters)
my_inline_query <- run_inline_query(model = "thelook",
									view = "orders", # refers to the base view, or the name of the explore from which you are querying from
									fields = c("orders.count", "orders.created_month")
									filters = list(c("orders.created_month", "90 days"), c("orders.status", "complete"))
)

Contributing

Clone this repo git clone git@github.com:looker/lookr.git;
Download Intellij IDEA (Community Edition is fine), or your preferred JAVA IDE;
In your Java IDE, generate a new project from external source—namely, lookr/pom.xml;
When deploying new changes, make sure to bundle an uber jar containing all of the dependencies.

TODO

tests;
push as many R functions as possible into Java.

RDAdams/lookr