Enter passwords interactively in R or R Studio (Server)?

Question

Is there a way in R to enter passwords interactively to the command line and hide them from the screen? I know there's readLine, but I do not know passwords can be hidden there. Assume you want to connect to a database using ROracle or RMySQL and do not want to store the password in a script but rather make the user enter it every time a query is executed.

Yes, we had a similar question around here, but I feel that the situation has changed and it's worth to address to problem again. Unfortunately tcltk won't work on RStudio (Server).

However I have seen the folks at R Studio found a solution for their version control support. I remember previous versions where I could see my repo password every time I enter it in R Studio, but now that seems to be fixed. I know it's likely R Studio technique, but is there a way mortal R users can access it when working with R Studio Server?

Solution

Actually R Studio (Server) provides a nice solution. You can access it by using .rs functions. They provide an undocumented password function which is really nice though there's no guaranteed support forever and a day:

.rs.askForPassword("foo")

You can find the the original hint from RStudio's Josh here: http://support.rstudio.org/help/discussions/questions/1448-password-interaction-with-dbs-on-rstudio-server

EDIT: As of 2015 there is another nice solution to enter password interactively. You could use shiny to have a little web based window with a password form. This discussion I had with @hadley shows an example snippet: https://github.com/rstats-db/RPostgres/issues/26

EDIT: As of 2017 there is another update to this. @m-dz pointed us to this: rstudioapi::askForPassword("Enter your pw") as well as getPass::getPass() from the R Studio Support webpage. Plus, I also realized that there is .rs.api.askForPassword() which is equivalent to the initially suggested call - at least as far as I've seen.

Comments

[Manoel Galdino]

I have a dumb question. How do I use this function on Rstudio server?

[Matt Bannert]

@ManoelGaldino: It just works like on Desktop R. I basically use it in database context like with ROracle or RPostgreSQL in order not to store DB passwords. Works for me on both Desktop and Server version. Did you encounter any specific trouble?

[m-dz]

Was just browsing for this and on an RStudio support webpage rstudioapi::askForPassword("") is mentioned as a preferred function when using RStudio, also getPass::getPass() function is mentioned there which seems to be a more versatile solution.

[Matt Bannert]

@m-dz: thanks for the update. I'll your comment to the answer. That wasn't around back in '13.

[m-dz]

@MattBannert, exactly that was my intent!