How to use R with Google Colaboratory?

Question

Google Colaboratory supports Python version 2.7 and 3.6

I saw an example how to use Swift in Colab a while ago.

Today, I happened to run

!jupyter-kernelspec list

And found a new kernel: IRkernel

Available kernels:
  ir         /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/ir
  python2    /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/python2
  python3    /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/python3
  swift      /usr/local/share/jupyter/kernels/swift

Is it now possible to use R in Colab as well? No hassle in installing R kernel?

Answer 1

Yes.

For a new R-notebook, use this link.

You can learn from IRkernel demos, e.g. demo.ipynb

Save a copy in your Google Drive, and make any changes you need.

2 more demos:

• Display.ipynb shows how to display HTML, images.
• Comm_Demo.ipynb shows how to communicate between R and JavaScript.

See more details in IRkernel Github.

Answer 2

In case you want to use Python and R together, you can use R magic for some cells.

# activate R magic
%load_ext rpy2.ipython

Then, whenever you want to use R, you begin the cell with %%R

%%R
x <- 42
print(x)

More details in rpy2 documentation

Answer 3

Open this link in your browser to create a new notebook with R Kernel

https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#create=true&language=r

Answer 4

*****Working as of Friday 13th November 2020

Go this URL https://colab.to/r whilst signed into colab and that should do it.

You can check if R in Runtime -> Change runtime type, but it should already be setup.

To mount google drive:

install.packages("googledrive")
library("googledrive")

if (file.exists("/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/google/colab/_ipython.py")){ 
  install.packages("R.utils")
  library("R.utils")
  library("httr")
  my_check <- function() {return(TRUE)}
  reassignInPackage("is_interactive", pkgName = "httr", my_check)
  options(rlang_interactive=TRUE)
}                                                                                    

And authenticate google drive

drive_auth(use_oob = TRUE, cache = TRUE)

Answer 5

Update: this doesn't work anymore (july 2020).

The above link on answers above takes directly to R notebook, there you have an option change between R or python. It is strange that Google is changing services just like this. Hence stackoverflow not a great platform to promote tools created by profit mongering/data-selling companies.

Old answer:

As of now if you click at Runtime on menu bar then choose Change Runtime Type, you can choose between R or Python.

Answer 6

To expand on a previous answer, here's how you can move dataframes between the R and Python kernels so you can work with both in the same notebook (for example, if you want to load data in with Pandas, process it with an R package, and then plot it with Bokeh).

# Pandas dataframe to R data frame
!pip3 install rpy2
%load_ext rpy2.ipython
%R -i df

# R data frame to Pandas dataframe
%R seq.data <- read.delim('sequence.index', header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
seq_data = %R seq.data

Answer 7

Another quick way is to replace postix, .ipynb in colab title to .r
Example: change name of Untitled.ipynb to Untitled.r, and everything works perfectly!