This package uses Rcpp to connect R to the Tableau SDK.
The Tableau SDK functionalities are implemented in this package as two R functions:
write_tde: Take a R data.frame and output it as a Tableau Data Extract (.tde) filepublish_tde: Publish a .tde file to a Tableau Server
I am still working on the configure file so you may run into issues during installation. You may need to create your own Makevars if you installed in a different location than I did.
Install the Tableau SDK before trying to install this package.
I've only tested this on Mac and Linux, here's where my SDK files are installed.
Shared object files: /usr/lib64/tableausdk/
Binary executable: /usr/local/bin/tdeserver64
/Library/Frameworks
- The Tableau SDK spawns other processes. This can cause havoc with GUIs such as RStudio. Therefore rtableau should only be used in console R.
- There are some issues with the 9.3 SDK on Linux when using large datasets, I recommend using the 9.2 version of the SDK which is more stable.
- The Tableau SDK does not support SSL on Linux for publishing
The main challenge of implementing this is that a R data.frame can have arbitrary data structures and types, while C++ is strongly typed. I try to map types but keep in mind you will run into issues if you try and output anything other than a matrix of scalar values.
| R vector type | Rcpp vector type | Tableau scalar type |
|---|---|---|
| character | CharacterVector | CharString |
| factor | CharacterVector | CharString |
| double | NumericVector | Double |
| integer | IntegerVector | Integer |
| logical | LogicalVector | Boolean |
| Date | NumericVector | Date |
| POSIXct | NumericVector | DateTime |
| POSIXlt | NumericVector | DateTime |
We convert factors to character in R, as well as POSIXlt to POSIXct.