Simple user interface in R to get login details

Occasionally I have to connect to services from R that ask for login details, such as databases. I don't like to store my login details in the R source code file, instead I would prefer to enter the my login details when I execute the code.

Fortunately, I found some old code in a post by Barry Rowlingson that does just that. It uses the tcltk package in R to create a little window in which the user can enter her details, without showing the password. The tcltk package is part of base R, which means the code will run on any operating system. Nice!

	getLoginDetails <- function(){
	## Based on code by Barry Rowlingson
	## http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/tkentry-that-exits-after-RETURN-tt854721.html#none
	require(tcltk)
	tt <- tktoplevel()
	tkwm.title(tt, "Get login details")
	Name <- tclVar("Login ID")
	Password <- tclVar("Password")
	entry.Name <- tkentry(tt,width="20", textvariable=Name)
	entry.Password <- tkentry(tt, width="20", show="*",
	textvariable=Password)
	tkgrid(tklabel(tt, text="Please enter your login details."))
	tkgrid(entry.Name)
	tkgrid(entry.Password)

	OnOK <- function()
	{
	tkdestroy(tt)
	}
	OK.but <-tkbutton(tt,text=" OK ", command=OnOK)
	tkbind(entry.Password, "<Return>", OnOK)
	tkgrid(OK.but)
	tkfocus(tt)
	tkwait.window(tt)

	invisible(c(loginID=tclvalue(Name), password=tclvalue(Password)))
	}
	credentials <- getLoginDetails()
	## Do what needs to be done
	## Delete credentials
	rm(credentials)

view raw getLoginDetails.R hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Session Info

R version 3.1.1 (2014-07-10)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.1.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] tcltk stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base

Posted by Unknown