Running “Native” Data Wrangling Applications in the Browser – IPython Notebooks (and R?) in Chrome

Using browser based data analysis toolkits such as pandas in IPython notebooks, or R in RStudio, means you need to have access to python or R and the corresponding application server either on your own computer, or running on a remote server that you have access to.

When running occasional training sessions or workshops, this can cause several headaches: either a remote service needs to be set up that is capable of supporting the expected number of participants, security may need putting in place, accounts configured (or account management tools supported), network connections need guaranteeing so that participants can access the server, and so on; or participants need to install software on their own computers: ideally this would be done in advance of a training session, otherwise training time is spent installing, configuring and debugging software installs; some computers may have security policies that prevent users installing software, or require and IT person with admin privileges to install the software, and so on.

That’s why the coLaboratory Chrome extension looks like an interesting innovation – it runs an IPython notebook fork, with pandas and matplotlib as a Chrome Native Client application. I posted a quick walkthrough of the extension over on the School of Data blog: Working With Data in the Browser Using python – coLaboratory.

Via a Twitter exchange with @nativeclient, it seems that there’s also the possibility that R could run as a dependency free Chrome extension. Native Client seems to like things written in C/C++, which underpins R, although I think R also has some fortran dependencies. (One of the coLaboratory talks mentioned the to do list item of getting scipy (I think?) running in the coLaboratory extension, the major challenge there (or whatever the package was) being the fortran src; so there maybe be synergies in working the fortran components there?))

Within a couple of hours of the twitter exchange starting, Brad Nelson/@flagxor posted a first attempt at an R port to the Native Client. I don’t pretend to understand what’s involved in moving from this to an extension with some sort of useable UI, even if only a command line, but it represents an interesting possibility: of being able to run R in the browser (or at least, in Chrome). Package availability would be limited of course to packages compiled to run using PNaCl.

For training events, there is still the requirement that users install a Chrome browser on their computer and then install the extension into that. However, I think it is possible to run Chrome as a portable app – that is, from a flash drive such as a USB memory stick: Google Chrome Portable (Windows).

I’m not sure how fast it would be able to run, but it suggests there may be a way of carrying a portable, dependency free pandas environment around that you can run on a Windows computer from a USB key?! And maybe R too…?