rpy2 / R interface

rpy2 is an interface to R running embedded in a Python process, and also includes functionality to deal with pandas DataFrames. Converting data frames back and forth between rpy2 and pandas should be largely automated (no need to convert explicitly, it will be done on the fly in most rpy2 functions). To convert explicitly, the functions are pandas2ri.py2ri() and pandas2ri.ri2py().

See also the documentation of the rpy2 project: https://rpy2.readthedocs.io.

In the remainder of this page, a few examples of explicit conversion is given. The pandas conversion of rpy2 needs first to be activated:

In [1]: from rpy2.robjects import r, pandas2ri

In [2]: pandas2ri.activate()

Transferring R data sets into Python

Once the pandas conversion is activated (pandas2ri.activate()), many conversions of R to pandas objects will be done automatically. For example, to obtain the ‘iris’ dataset as a pandas DataFrame:

In [3]: r.data('iris')
Out[3]: 
R object with classes: ('character',) mapped to:
<StrVector - Python:0x133e574c8 / R:0x7ff186958138>
['iris']

In [4]: r['iris'].head()