Is this package maintained?

[gshotwell]

We're thinking of purchasing Looker and as part of that we're looking into how well Looker integrates to our existing R and Python workflows. I see that this package hasn't had any activity in 18 months, and also seems to be one API version behind the Looker API. I also see a number of issues which seem to be related to installing the package on windows and using recent versions of R which haven't been updated.

Can someone chime in on whether this package is still supported? If not, it might be good to add that to the README.

[aaron-horowitz]

If it helps at all for the folks at Looker considering this, we (the ACLU team) have abandoned both the R and Python APIs entirely and basically use direct requests through http requests. I have no idea if this is the "right" answer, but found the original APIs sufficiently incomplete that this was the right choice for us.

[jkaster]

Thanks for bringing this up! We've just been discussing the update to this internally.

This SDK has been caught in the transition to our new SDK code generator.

Work on a new version of LookR will begin after we have the Swift and Kotlin SDKs produced by our code generator ready for beta, but there's no specific date for that yet.

The first step for any of our new SDKs is developing the run-time library (RTL), as described in https://github.com/looker-open-source/sdk-codegen/blob/master/rationale.md#hand-written-run-time-libraries. That part of the SDKs is almost completely generic (IOW, not specific to Looker). If you have any interest in participating in the development of the R RTL, please let me know. Once the new R RTL exists, it should be a month or less of development work to generate the methods and models for R.

Disclaimer: I'm not an R language expert, so these are just guesses and hand-wavy right now. I'm one of the authors of the SDK Codegen project, so I know pretty well what's involved in producing the new LookR, but not specifically what the R support will look like.

Side note: You can get our new, supported Python SDK produced by that code generator from https://pypi.org/project/looker-sdk/. (We never had an officially supported Python SDK before that was released.)

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[dthorpe]

I don't believe any new work is planned for this R package. It was created and is maintained as a volunteer effort, not an officially supported Looker product.

We intend to support R as an output of our Looker Client SDK project, which is in active development: https://github.com/looker-open-source/sdk-codegen

One stumbling block for that intent is finding an R language expert to advise / help us produce an R SDK and validate any R client SDK we produce. Volunteers welcome! :)

[dthorpe]

erp. Jinx! :)

[gshotwell]

Ah great to hear that things are moving forward. I'd suggest adding some text to the README or a lifecycle badge to express that it's not under active development.

I'd be happy to help with the R binding, I've worked on a few API wrappers previously, though none that relied on a codegen process. Let me know what the best process is to get started.

[jkaster]

Good suggestion on documenting the status of LookR. We'll get to that hopefully next week!

I'm really happy to hear about the R binding. I'm meeting with an R aficionado here at Looker soon, and I'll have the start of a plan then. Just having someone who knows R who can say "Yuck, that's an ugly pattern" (or not) will be really valuable. If you read the rationale document linked above you should have a good idea of what we're planning.

Hopefully there will be a document on how to create an SDK for your chosen language available in the next couple weeks, if I can carve out some time for it.

[scrane-amplify]

+1 for documenting the status of this repo. I see that update was never made. I'd also be happy to contribute to an R SDK however might be helpful.

[jkaster]

Work will commence on the update to LookR shortly. Please stay tuned.

[rsaporta]

Howdie @jkaster, @dthorpe, curious if any update on this? thanks!

[jkaster]

Thanks for asking! Not yet, although we did just land a branch for Look#, the C# SDK in the SDK codegen project. LookR is next on our list to look at again.

…

On Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 11:09 PM Rick Saporta ***@***.***> wrote: Howdie @jkaster <https://github.com/jkaster>, @dthorpe <https://github.com/dthorpe>, curious if any update on this? thanks! — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#38 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABORGAWLCKD6BFZUTA6FXL3RXGVSPANCNFSM4KMJELKQ> .

[jkaster]

@scrane-amplify I know it's been basically forever, but would you be interested in contributing to the R SDK when we do begin work on it? Possibly you could advise on the RTL and preferred R language syntax. See BYO SDK for more information.

[drstrangelooker]

Just as a "quick and dirty" effort, I regenerated the R SDK against the Looker API v3.1 and pushed the results under the branch api-3.1. You can load it with devtools::install_github("looker/lookr", ref = "api-3.1").

I did minimal testing, basically making sure that sdk$runInlineQuery and sdk$runLook work properly.