Save R plot to web server

I'm trying to create a procedure which extracts data from a MySQL server (using the RODBC package), performs some statistical routines on that data in R, then saves generated plots back to the server such that they can be retrieved in a Web Browser via a little bit of php and web magic.

My plan is to save the plot in a MySQL BLOB field by using the RODBC package to execute a SQL insert into statement. I think I can insert the data directly as a string. Problem is, how do I get the data string and will this even work? My best thou开发者_Go百科ght is to use the savePlot function to save a temp file and then read it back in somehow.

Anybody tried this before or have suggestions on how to approach this?

Regardless of if you think this is a terrible idea, here is a working answer I was able to piece together from this post

## open connection
library(RODBC)
channel <- odbcConnect("")

## generate a plot and save it to a temp file
x <- rnorm(100,0,1)
hist(x, col="light blue")
savePlot("temp.jpg", type="jpeg")

## read back in the temp file as binary
plot_binary <- paste(readBin("temp.jpg", what="raw", n=1e6), collapse="")

## insert it into a table
sqlQuery(channel, paste("insert into test values (1, x'",plot_binary,"')", sep=""))

## close connection
odbcClose(channel)

Before implementation, I'll make sure to do some soul searching to decide if this should be used rather than using the servers file system.

Storing images in databases is often frowned upon. To create an in memory file in R you can use a textConnection as a connection. This will give you the string. It will work if you don't forget to set the proper mime type and open the connection as binary.

Save the plot to a server and write the filename into the database will work. But there's this thing called Rapache may help. Plus, Jeroen Ooms has some online demo, including a web interface for Hadley Wickham's famous R Graph package ggplot2.