Installing R and RApache in XAMPP for Windows

Question

How can I get R and RApache installed in XAMPP for Windows?

I'm new to XAMPP, unix, and server environments. I've googled around but can't find much on putting this PHP, XAMPP, Windows and R combination together.

I'm trying to write a webpage that passes variables to R via the PHP exec() function. The eventual user wants ggvis plots on the arguments, so R is necessary.

I'm running XAMPP on Windows 8.1. The base installation works fine, but I'm stuck at passing variables with exec() because I don't have R or RApache installed in my XAMPP environment, although I have R in my Windows environment.

I have tried the rApache installation instructions.

Running 'sudo apt-get install devscripts git' on the shell returns the error

'sudo' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.'

Answer 1

The error sudo is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file is because, you are trying to run Linux command on window shell ( command prompt). I don't think it is possible to integrate R, Apache, MySQL, PHP on XAMPP. I am curious myself to learn more if someone have new solutions. However, as you mentioned in the comment, the path to the R script is all that is needed to use exec. Here is a working R script

php/html script

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);
if(isset($_GET['N']))   {
  $N = $_GET['N'];    
exec("\"C:\\Program Files\\R\\R-3.2.3\\bin\\Rscript.exe\"
      C:\\my_folder\\www\\R-scripts\\Test.R $N", $output);
echo '<pre>', join("\r\n", $output), "</pre>\r\n";
  $nocache = rand();
  echo("<img src='temp.png?$nocache' />");
}

$out .= "
<form method='get'>
   Number values to generate: <input type='text' name='N' />
   <input type='submit' />
</form>";
echo $out;

R-Script

args <- commandArgs(TRUE)
N <- args[1]
x <- rnorm(N,0,1)
print(x)
png(filename = "temp.png", width=500, height=500)
hist(x, col = "lightblue")

However, I am interested to know if there are any updated packages from R or modules from php to integrate R and PHP. Any experts who can update on this topic ?