Running R Scripts Directly From Dropbox

I have written a little function that allows users to run R scripts out of Dropbox directly from any location.  It was aided by this post on biobucket.  The reason I am particularly interested in this feature is because I am often using a server to run my R code.  This otherwise would require me to upload my R script directly to the server every time I make a change.  However, I can instantly test my code on the server by having it run the code remotely since dropbox is very good at detecting changes and updating its database instantly.

# Evaluate code directly from a dropbox file
dropbox.eval <- function(x, noeval=F) {
  require(RCurl)
  # Load the file into memory as a text file with getURL
  intext <- getURL(paste0("https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/",x), 
                        ssl.verifypeer = FALSE)
  # For some reason \r seem to be frequently inserted into 
  #   the script files that I save.  They present a problem
  #   so I remove them using gsub.
  intext <- gsub("\r","", intext)
  # Evaluate the input file.
  if (!noeval) eval(parse(text = intext), envir= .GlobalEnv)
  # Finally return the dropbox script as text.
  return(intext)
}
 
dropbox.eval("sh/1fjpw58gko634ye/C74hTEkknP/Demo.R")

Highlighted by Pretty R at inside-R.org

I also found that there is a R package built specifically for interfacing with dropbox which looks pretty great at https://github.com/karthikram/rDrop.  I have not yet implemented it.

This command can also be found at
https://github.com/EconometricsBySimulation/RConcerto/blob/master/Package.R

I am starting work on a package (RConcerto) meant to provide tools for helping in the production of Concerto online tests.  It also includes tools for generating HTML objects.  More on this in the future.