Interfacing C# .Net and R - Integrating the best of both worlds

STEP 1 - Creating the Windows Form

In Visual Studio create a new Windows Form application.

STEP 2 - Add project reference to the R (D)COM library


STEP 3 - Add library references to your form code

This is done by adding references as follows:

using StatConnectorCommonLib;
using STATCONNECTORSRVLib;

STEP 4 - Setting and Initializing Connection


private StatConnector rconn;
private int dataSize;

Both these variables are initialized in the default constructor of my form, in my case named frmMain.

public frmMain()
{
InitializeComponent();
dataSize = 100;
rconn = new STATCONNECTORSRVLib.StatConnector();
rconn.Init("R");
}

STEP 5 - Invoking R commands and displaying results

The form that I created in my example had the following components:

1. A listbox which is used to present the random numbers generated from R
2. Two labels which present the Mean and Standard Deviation of the data calculated from R
3. A button which kicks off the process

The button clicked handler code is presented below:

private void btnGenData_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
        rconn.SetSymbol("sdataSize",dataSize);


       //Generate Data in R
       rconn.Evaluate("sdata<-rnorm(sdataSize)");
       double[] data = (double[])rconn.GetSymbol("sdata");


      //Calculate Statistics in R
      rconn.Evaluate("saverage<-mean(sdata)");
      rconn.Evaluate("sstdev<-sd(sdata)");
     double average = (double)rconn.GetSymbol("saverage");
     double stdev = (double)rconn.GetSymbol("sstdev");




     // Display Data and Results on Windows Form
     lbDataList.Items.Clear();
     for (int c = 0; c < dataSize; c++)
    {
       lbDataList.Items.Add(data[c]);
    }
    lblAverage.Text = "Average: " + average;
    lblStdDev.Text = "Standard Deviation: " + stdev;


}