{"id":13845,"date":"2023-03-20T04:45:46","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T09:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rud.is\/b\/?p=13845"},"modified":"2023-03-20T04:45:46","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T09:45:46","slug":"webr-filesystem-and-reefr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rud.is\/b\/2023\/03\/20\/webr-filesystem-and-reefr\/","title":{"rendered":"WebR Filesystem Machinations & ReefR"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s difficult to believe it has only been a couple of weeks since WebR has been around. But that might just be my perception. The spike protein invasion has significantly increased sedentary time, and that has enabled me to focus on this new toy to keep my attention focused on something positive. So, I’ve had \u201cWebR on the mind\u201d more than most others.<\/p>\n

As folks likely know, I’m keeping a log of these \u201cexperiments\u201d over at GH<\/a>, and I’ve blogged, here, a bit on a few of them. (I promise I’ll get to Part 2 of \u201cggwebr\u201d, soon.)<\/em>. Today we have an update on two of them.<\/p>\n

WebR Filesystem Machinations<\/h3>\n

This WebR-powered page<\/a> is pretty a pretty self-contained explanation of how to work with the Emscripten filesystem from both the javascript and R contexts of WebR. I set out to just do that, but I was also sick of writing HTML for everything, and spent some time coming up with a system for hacking on these experiments with Markdown.<\/p>\n

Yes, I could just use the exciting new Quarto WebR extension<\/a> and Quarto itself, but there are advantages to working in plain Markdown, HTML, and Vanilla JS blank canvas (Quarto-rendered HTML is a bit, er, crufty<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The code in this filesystem experiment is also a bit different in another way: it uses a Vanilla JS lightweight reactive framework called Reef<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It worked so well that I made a few more examples, which are covered in the remaining sections.<\/p>\n

More Concise Example<\/h3>\n

The filesystem experiment is a tad big, especially since it introduces some fancy javascript things many R folks are not familiar with. That, combined with the cognitive load associated with learning WebR itself, meant I had to simplify things a bit if I wanted to convey the utility of this setup.<\/p>\n

If you’re asking, \u201cwhy not just use React?\u201d, the answer is that React is overkill for the small projects I have in mind, and that I think<\/em> many other folks who may want to use WebR also have in mind. I also don’t really like packers\/bundlers. The early days of the web were fun and easy to work in, and I wanted to replicate that for WebR.<\/p>\n

So, I made the sadly named webr-reef<\/a> example. It’s a small app that:<\/p>\n