rud.is

The past two posts have (lightly) introduced how to use compiled Swift code in R, but they’ve involved a bunch of “scary” command line machinations and incantations.

One feature of {Rcpp} I’ve always 💙 is the cppFunction() (“r-lib” zealots have a similar cpp11::cpp_function()) which lets one experiment with C[++] code in R with as little friction as possible. To make it easier to start experimenting with Swift, I’ve built an extremely fragile swift_function() in {swiftr} that intends to replicate this functionality. Explaining it will be easier with an example.

Reading Property Lists in R With Swift

macOS relies heavily on property lists for many, many things. These can be plain text (XML) or binary files and there are command-line tools and Python libraries (usable via {reticulate}) that can read them along with the good ‘ol XML::readKeyValueDB(). We’re going to create a Swift function to read property lists and return JSON which we can use back in R via {jsonlite}.

This time around there’s no need to create extra files, just install {swiftr} and your favorite R IDE and enter the following (expository is after the code):

library(swiftr)

swift_function(
  code = '

func ignored() {
  print("""
this will be ignored by swift_function() but you could use private
functions as helpers for the main public Swift function which will be 
made available to R.
""")
}  

@_cdecl ("read_plist")
public func read_plist(path: SEXP) -> SEXP {

  var out: SEXP = R_NilValue

  do {
    // read in the raw plist
    let plistRaw = try Data(contentsOf: URL(fileURLWithPath: String(cString: R_CHAR(STRING_ELT(path, 0)))))

    // convert it to a PropertyList  
    let plist = try PropertyListSerialization.propertyList(from: plistRaw, options: [], format: nil) as! [String:Any]

    // serialize it to JSON
    let jsonData = try JSONSerialization.data(withJSONObject: plist , options: .prettyPrinted)

    // setup the JSON string return
    String(data: jsonData, encoding: .utf8)?.withCString { 
      cstr in out = Rf_mkString(cstr) 
    }

  } catch {
    debugPrint("\\(error)")
  }

  return(out)

}
')

This new swift_function() function — for the moment (the API is absolutely going to change) — is defined as:

swift_function(
  code,
  env = globalenv(),
  imports = c("Foundation"),
  cache_dir = tempdir()
)

where:

• code is a length 1 character vector of Swift code
• env is the environment to expose the function in (defaults to the global environment)
• imports is a character vector of any extra Swift frameworks that need to be imported
• cache_dir is where all the temporary files will be created and compiled dynlib will be stored. It defaults to a temporary directory so specify your own directory (that exists) if you want to keep the files around after you close the R session

Folks familiar with cppFunction() will notice some (on-purpose) similarities.

The function expects you to expose only one public Swift function which also (for the moment) needs to have the @_cdecl decorator before it. You can have as many other valid Swift helper functions as you like, but are restricted to one function that will be turned into an R function automagically.

In this example, swift_function() will see public func read_plist(path: SEXP) -> SEXP { and be able to identify

• the function name (read_plist)
• the number of parameters (they all need to be SEXP, for now)
• the names of the parameters

A complete source file with all the imports will be created and a pre-built bridging header (which comes along for the ride with {swiftr}) will be included in the compilation step and a dylib will be built and loaded into the R session. Finally, an R function that wraps a .Call() will be created and will have the function name of the Swift function as well as all the parameter names (if any).

In the case of our example, above, the built R function is:

function(path) {
  .Call("read_plist", path)
}

There’s a good chance you’re using RStudio, so we can test this with it’s property list, or you can substitute any other application’s property list (or any .plist you have) to test this out:

read_plist("/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/Info.plist") %>% 
  jsonlite::fromJSON() %>% 
  str(1)
## List of 32
##  $ NSPrincipalClass                     : chr "NSApplication"
##  $ NSCameraUsageDescription             : chr "R wants to access the camera."
##  $ CFBundleIdentifier                   : chr "org.rstudio.RStudio"
##  $ CFBundleShortVersionString           : chr "1.4.1093-1"
##  $ NSBluetoothPeripheralUsageDescription: chr "R wants to access bluetooth."
##  $ NSRemindersUsageDescription          : chr "R wants to access the reminders."
##  $ NSAppleEventsUsageDescription        : chr "R wants to run AppleScript."
##  $ NSHighResolutionCapable              : logi TRUE
##  $ LSRequiresCarbon                     : logi TRUE
##  $ NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription       : chr "R wants to access the photo library."
##  $ CFBundleGetInfoString                : chr "RStudio 1.4.1093-1, © 2009-2020 RStudio, PBC"
##  $ NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription  : chr "R wants to access location information."
##  $ CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion        : chr "6.0"
##  $ NSSupportsAutomaticGraphicsSwitching : logi TRUE
##  $ CSResourcesFileMapped                : logi TRUE
##  $ CFBundleVersion                      : chr "1.4.1093-1"
##  $ OSAScriptingDefinition               : chr "RStudio.sdef"
##  $ CFBundleLongVersionString            : chr "1.4.1093-1"
##  $ CFBundlePackageType                  : chr "APPL"
##  $ NSContactsUsageDescription           : chr "R wants to access contacts."
##  $ NSCalendarsUsageDescription          : chr "R wants to access calendars."
##  $ NSMicrophoneUsageDescription         : chr "R wants to access the microphone."
##  $ CFBundleDocumentTypes                :'data.frame':  16 obs. of  8 variables:
##  $ NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription    : chr "R wants write access to the photo library."
##  $ NSAppleScriptEnabled                 : logi TRUE
##  $ CFBundleExecutable                   : chr "RStudio"
##  $ CFBundleSignature                    : chr "Rstd"
##  $ NSHumanReadableCopyright             : chr "RStudio 1.4.1093-1, © 2009-2020 RStudio, PBC"
##  $ CFBundleName                         : chr "RStudio"
##  $ LSApplicationCategoryType            : chr "public.app-category.developer-tools"
##  $ CFBundleIconFile                     : chr "RStudio.icns"
##  $ CFBundleDevelopmentRegion            : chr "English"

FIN

A source_swift() function is on the horizon as is adding a ton of checks/validations to swift_function(). I’ll likely be adding some of the SEXP and R Swift utility functions I’ve demonstrated in the [unfinished] book to make it fairly painless to interface Swift and R code in this new and forthcoming function.

As usual, kick the tyres, submit feature requests and bugs in any forum that’s comfortable and stay strong, wear a 😷, and socially distanced when out and about.

The previous post introduced the topic of how to compile Swift code for use in R using a useless, toy example. This one goes a bit further and makes a case for why one might want to do this by showing how to use one of Apple’s machine learning libraries, specifically the Natural Language one, focusing on extracting parts of speech from text.

I made a parts-of-speech directory to keep the code self-contained. In it are two files. The first is partsofspeech.swift (swiftc seems to dislike dashes in names of library code and I dislike underscores):

import NaturalLanguage
import CoreML

extension Array where Element == String {
  var SEXP: SEXP? {
    let charVec = Rf_protect(Rf_allocVector(SEXPTYPE(STRSXP), count))
    defer { Rf_unprotect(1) }
    for (idx, elem) in enumerated() { SET_STRING_ELT(charVec, idx, Rf_mkChar(elem)) }
    return(charVec)
  }
}

@_cdecl ("part_of_speech")
public func part_of_speech(_ x: SEXP) -> SEXP {

  let text = String(cString: R_CHAR(STRING_ELT(x, 0)))
  let tagger = NLTagger(tagSchemes: [.lexicalClass])

  tagger.string = text

  let options: NLTagger.Options = [.omitPunctuation, .omitWhitespace]

  var txts = [String]()
  var tags = [String]()

  tagger.enumerateTags(in: text.startIndex..<text.endIndex, unit: .word, scheme: .lexicalClass, options: options) { tag, tokenRange in
    if let tag = tag {
      txts.append("\(text[tokenRange])")
      tags.append("\(tag.rawValue)")
    }
    return true
  }

  let out = Rf_protect(Rf_allocVector(SEXPTYPE(VECSXP), 2))
  SET_VECTOR_ELT(out, 0, txts.SEXP)
  SET_VECTOR_ELT(out, 1, tags.SEXP)
  Rf_unprotect(1)

  return(out!)
}

The other is bridge code that seems to be the same for every one of these (or could be) so I’ve just named it swift-r-glue.h (it’s the same as the bridge code in the previous post):

#define USE_RINTERNALS

#include <R.h>
#include <Rinternals.h>

const char* R_CHAR(SEXP x);

Let’s walk through the Swift code.

We need to two imports:

import NaturalLanguage
import CoreML

to make use of the NLP functionality provided by Apple.

The following extension to the String Array class:

extension Array where Element == String {
  var SEXP: SEXP? {
    let charVec = Rf_protect(Rf_allocVector(SEXPTYPE(STRSXP), count))
    defer { Rf_unprotect(1) }
    for (idx, elem) in enumerated() { SET_STRING_ELT(charVec, idx, Rf_mkChar(elem)) }
    return(charVec)
  }
}

will reduce the amount of code we need to type later on to turn Swift String Arrays to R character vectors.

The start of the function:

@_cdecl ("part_of_speech")
public func part_of_speech(_ x: SEXP) -> SEXP {

tells swiftc to make this a C-compatible call and notes that the function takes one parameter (in this case, it’s expecting a length 1 character vector) and returns an R-compatible value (which will be a list that we’ll turn into a data.frame in R just for brevity).

The following sets up our inputs and outputs:

  let text = String(cString: R_CHAR(STRING_ELT(x, 0)))
  let tagger = NLTagger(tagSchemes: [.lexicalClass])

  tagger.string = text

  let options: NLTagger.Options = [.omitPunctuation, .omitWhitespace]

  var txts = [String]()
  var tags = [String]()

We convert the passed-in parameter to a Swift String, initialize the NLP tagger, and setup two arrays to hold the results (sentence component in txts and the part of speech that component is in tags).

The following code is mostly straight from Apple and (inefficiently) populates the previous two arrays:

  tagger.enumerateTags(in: text.startIndex..<text.endIndex, unit: .word, scheme: .lexicalClass, options: options) { tag, tokenRange in
    if let tag = tag {
      txts.append("\(text[tokenRange])")
      tags.append("\(tag.rawValue)")
    }
    return true
  }

Finally, we use the Swift-R bridge to make a list much like one would in C:

  let out = Rf_protect(Rf_allocVector(SEXPTYPE(VECSXP), 2))
  SET_VECTOR_ELT(out, 0, txts.SEXP)
  SET_VECTOR_ELT(out, 1, tags.SEXP)
  Rf_unprotect(1)

  return(out!)

To get a shared library we can use from R, we just need to compile this like last time:

swiftc \
  -I /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Headers \
  -F/Library/Frameworks \
  -framework R \
  -import-objc-header swift-r-glue.h \
  -emit-library \
  partsofspeech.swift

Let’s run that on some text! First, we’ll load the new shared library into R:

dyn.load("libpartsofspeech.dylib")

Next, we’ll make a wrapper function to avoid messy .Call(…)s and to make a data.frame:

parts_of_speech <- function(x) {
  res <- .Call("part_of_speech", x)  
  as.data.frame(stats::setNames(res, c("name", "tag")))
}

Finally, let’s try this on some text!

tibble::as_tibble(
  parts_of_speech(paste0(c(
"The comm wasn't working. Feeling increasingly ridiculous, he pushed",
"the button for the 1MC channel several more times. Nothing. He opened",
"his eyes and saw that all the lights on the panel were out. Then he",
"turned around and saw that the lights on the refrigerator and the",
"ovens were out. It wasn’t just the coffeemaker; the entire galley was",
"in open revolt. Holden looked at the ship name, Rocinante, newly",
"stenciled onto the galley wall, and said, Baby, why do you hurt me",
"when I love you so much?"
  ), collapse = " "))
)
## # A tibble: 92 x 2
##    name         tag
##    <chr>        <chr>
##  1 The          Determiner
##  2 comm         Noun
##  3 was          Verb
##  4 n't          Adverb
##  5 working      Verb
##  6 Feeling      Verb
##  7 increasingly Adverb
##  8 ridiculous   Adjective
##  9 he           Pronoun
## 10 pushed       Verb
## # … with 82 more rows

FIN

If you’re playing along at home, try adding a function to this Swift file that uses Apple’s entity tagger.

The next installment of this topic will be how to wrap all this into a package (then all these examples get tweaked and go into the tome.

I’ve been on a Swift + R bender for a while now, but have been envious of the pure macOS/iOS (et al) folks who get to use Apple’s seriously ++good machine learning libraries, which are even more robust on the new M1 hardware (it’s cool having hardware components dedicated to improving the performance of built models).

Sure, it’s pretty straightforward to make a command-line utility that can take data input, run them through models, then haul the data back into R, but I figured it was about time that Swift got the “Rust” and “Go” treatment in terms of letting R call compiled Swift code directly. Thankfully, none of this involves using Xcode since it’s one of the world’s worst IDEs.

To play along at home you’ll need macOS and at least the command line tools installed (I don’t think this requires a full Xcode install, but y’all can let me know if it does in the comments). If you can enter swiftc at a terminal prompt and get back <unknown>:0: error: no input files then you’re good-to-go.

Hello, Swift!

To keep this post short (since I’ll be adding this entire concept to the SwiftR tome), we’ll be super-focused and just build a shared library we can dynamically load into R. That library will have one function which will be to let us say hello to the planet with a customized greeting.

Make a new directory for this effort (I called mine greetings) and create a greetings.swift file with the following contents:

All this code is also in this gist.

@_cdecl ("greetings_from")
public func greetings_from(_ who: SEXP) -> SEXP {
  print("Greetings, 🌎, it's \(String(cString: R_CHAR(STRING_ELT(who, 0))))!")
  return(R_NilValue)
}

Before I explain what’s going on there, also create a geetings.h file with the following contents:

#define USE_RINTERNALS

#include <R.h>
#include <Rinternals.h>

const char* R_CHAR(SEXP x);

In the Swift file, there’s a single function that takes an R SEXP and converts it into a Swift String which is then routed to stdout (not a “great” R idiom, but benign enough for an intro example). Swift functions aren’t C functions and on their own do not adhere to C calling conventions. Unfortunately R’s ability to work with dynamic library code requires such a contract to be in place. Thankfully, the Swift Language Overlords provided us with the ability to instruct the compiler to create library code that will force the calling conventions to be C-like (that’s what the ＠cdecl is for).

We’re using SEXP, some R C-interface functions, and even the C version of NULL in the Swift code, but we haven’t done anything in the Swift file to tell Swift about the existence of these elements. That’s what the C header file is for (I added the R_CHAR declaration since complex C macros don’t work in Swift).

Now, all we need to do is make sure the compiler knows about the header file (which is a “bridge” between C and Swift), where the R framework is, and that we want to generate a library vs a binary executable file as we compile the code. Make sure you’re in the same directory as both the .swift and .h file and execute the following at a terminal prompt:

swiftc \
  -I /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Headers \ # where the R headers are
  -F/Library/Frameworks \                      # where the R.framework lives
  -framework R \                               # we want to link against the R framework
  -import-objc-header greetings.h \            # this is our bridging header which will make R C things available to Swift
  -emit-library \                              # we want a library, not an exe
  greetings.swift                              # our file!

If all goes well, you should have a libgreetings.dylib shared library in that directory.

Now, fire up a R console session in that directory and do:

greetings_lib <- dyn.load("libgreetings.dylib")

If there are no errors, the shared library has been loaded into your R session and we can use the function we just made! Let’s wrap it in an R function so we’re not constantly typing .Call(…):

greetings_from <- function(who = "me") {
  invisible(.Call("greetings_from", as.character(who[1])))
}

I also took the opportunity to make sure we are sending a length-1 character vector to the C/Swift function.

Now, say hello!

greetings_from("hrbrmstr")

And you should see:

Greetings, 🌎, it's hrbrmstr!

FIN

We’ll stop there for now, but hopefully this small introduction has shown how straightforward it can be to bridge Swift & R in the other direction.

I’ll have another post that shows how to extend this toy example to use one of Apple’s natural language processing libraries, and may even do one more on how to put all this into a package before I shunt all the individual posts into a few book chapters.