FaaSr

FaaSr: R Package for Function-as-a-Service Cloud Computing - Published in JOSS (2024)

https://github.com/faasr/faasr-package

Keywords from Contributors

Repository

Function-as-a-Service package for R

README.Rmd

---
output: github_document
---



```{r, include = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  fig.path = "man/figures/README-",
  out.width = "100%"
)
```

# FaaSr 


[![R-CMD-check](https://github.com/spark0510/FaaSr-package/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/spark0510/FaaSr-package/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml)
[![CRAN status](https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/FaaSr)](https://cran.r-project.org/package=FaaSr)
[![DOI](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.07027/status.svg)](https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.07027)


## Overview

The goal of FaaSr is to make it easy for developers to create R functions and workflows that can run in the cloud, on-demand, based on triggers - such as timers, or repository commits. It is built for Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) cloud computing, and supports both widely-used commercial (GitHub Actions, AWS Lambda, IBM Cloud) and open-source platforms (OpenWhisk). It is also built for cloud storage, and supports the S3 standard also widely used in commercial (AWS S3), open-source (Minio) and research platforms (Open Storage Network). With FaaSr, you can focus on developing the R functions, and leave dealing with the idiosyncrasies of different FaaS platforms and their APIs to the FaaSr package.

FaaSr allows you to:
* Develop one or more *functions* natively in R in your own GitHub repository
* Deploy *actions* that invoke your *functions* in Docker containers
* Compose *workflows* consisting of multiple *actions* in a pre-determined order, described by a Directed Acyclic Graph (*DAG*)
* Register your *workflows* for cloud-native execution in one of the supported FaaS providers
* Invoke your *workflows* with *events*, including scheduled timers
* Use S3-based *cloud storage* to provide file inputs and outputs to each *action* in the *workflow*

## Usage

The functions exposed by FaaSr can be broadly divided as follows:
* Server-side functions: are executed automatically in the cloud, by your functions/workflows. These deal with moving data from/to S3 storage and logging 
* Client-side functions: are executed interactively by you, in your local desktop. These deal with registering and invoking your workflows for execution in your FaaS provider of choice

### Server-side FaaSr functions
* `faasr_get_file(server_name, remote_folder, remote_file, local_folder, local_file)` downloads a file from an S3 server to be used by an *action*
* `faasr_put_file(server_name, remote_folder, remote_file, local_folder, local_file)` uploads a file from an *action* to an S3 server
* `faasr_delete_file(server_name, remote_folder, remote_file)` deletes a file from an S3 server
* `faasr_arrow_s3_bucket(server_name)` returns an arrow object for use with S3 server
* `faasr_log(message)` adds a message to the log of the running action

### Client-side FaaSr functions
* `workflow <- faasr(configuration_file, credentials_file)` returns a *workflow* list associated with a workflow configuration file (in JSON format) and file with credentials for S3 and FaaS server(s)
* `workflow$register_workflow()` registers a *workflow* with the configured FaaS provider
* `workflow$invoke_workflow()` immediately invokes a *workflow* with the configured FaaS provider
* `workflow$set_workflow_timer(cron_string)` set a timer (using the standard CRON format) to invoke a *workflow* at a given time interval with the configured FaaS provider
* `workflow$unset_workflow_timer()` unset a timer previously defined with `set_workflow_timer()`

### Workflow configuration

Workflows are configured using the JSON file format and the [FaaSr configuration schema](https://github.com/FaaSr/FaaSr-package/blob/main/schema/FaaSr.schema.json). 

You may use the [FaaSr-JSON-Builder Shiny app](https://faasr.shinyapps.io/faasr-json-builder/) to create and edit workflows using a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a text editor. This GUI can be used to create FaaSr-compliant JSON files from scratch (or starting from an exiting configuration you can upload using the tool). The generated configuration can be downloaded to your computer.

### Cloud credential configuration

The client-side FaaSr functions expect both a JSON configuration file describing a workflow, and an environment variable file storing the credentials for your FaaS cloud platforms of choice. The example below shows a template for S3 cloud storage, GitHub Actions, OpenWhisk and AWS Lambda credentials:

`"My_GitHub_Account_TOKEN"="REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_GITHUB_TOKEN"`
`"My_Minio_Bucket_ACCESS_KEY"="REPLACE_WITH_S3_ACCESS_KEY"`
`"My_Minio_Bucket_SECRET_KEY"="REPLACE_WITH_S3_SECRET_KEY"`
`"My_OW_Account_API_KEY"="REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_OPENWHISK_ID:SECRET_KEY"`
`"My_Lambda_Account_ACCESS_KEY"="REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_AWS_LAMBDA_ACCESS_KEY"`
`"My_Lambda_Account_SECRET_KEY"="REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_AWS_LAMBDA_SECRET_KEY"`

## Installation

FaaSr can be installed from CRAN with:

``` r
install.packages("FaaSr")
```

You can install the development version of FaaSr from [GitHub](https://github.com/) with:

``` r
devtools::install_github("FaaSr/FaaSr-package")
```


## Example

Please refer to the [FaaSr tutorial](https://github.com/FaaSr/FaaSr-tutorial) for a detailed step-by-step example that you can run on your own desktop (using Rocker) or on Posit Cloud, using just a GitHub account and the free-for-testing Minio S3 Play server

Owner

JOSS Publication

FaaSr: R Package for Function-as-a-Service Cloud Computing

Published

November 01, 2024

DOI

10.21105/joss.07027

Volume 9, Issue 103, Page 7027

Authors

Sungjae Park
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, FL, USA

Yun-Jung Ku
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, FL, USA

Nan Mu
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, FL, USA

Vahid Daneshmand
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, FL, USA

R. Quinn Thomas
Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation and Virginia Tech Center for Ecosystem Forecasting, Virginia Tech, VA, USA

Cayelan C. Carey
Department of Biological Sciences and Virginia Tech Center for Ecosystem Forecasting, Virginia Tech, VA, USA

Renato J. Figueiredo
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, FL, USA

Editor

Daniel S. Katz

Tags

cloud computing function-as-a-service

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