Progress updates for 'SimDesign' functions

Henrik Bengtsson

The progressify package allows you to easily add progress reporting to sequential and parallel map-reduce code by piping to the progressify() function. Easy!

TL;DR

library(progressify)
handlers(global = TRUE)
library(SimDesign)

# Create small design
Design <- createDesign(factor1 = c(1, 2))

Generate <- function(condition, fixed_objects = NULL) {
  rnorm(100)
}

Analyse <- function(condition, dat, fixed_objects = NULL) {
  mean(dat)
}

Summarise <- function(condition, results, fixed_objects = NULL) {
  mean(results)
}

# Run simulation with progress signaling
res <- runSimulation(design = Design, replications = 100,
                     generate = Generate, analyse = Analyse,
                     summarise = Summarise) |> progressify()

Introduction

This vignette demonstrates how to use this approach to add progress reporting to SimDesign functions such as runSimulation(). The SimDesign package provides a comprehensive framework for Monte Carlo simulation studies in R. For example, runSimulation() evaluates the generate and analyse functions replications times for each condition in the design:

library(SimDesign)

Design <- createDesign(factor1 = c(1, 2))
Generate <- function(condition, fixed_objects = NULL) rnorm(100)
Analyse <- function(condition, dat, fixed_objects = NULL) mean(dat)
Summarise <- function(condition, results, fixed_objects = NULL) mean(results)

res <- runSimulation(design = Design, replications = 100,
                     generate = Generate, analyse = Analyse,
                     summarise = Summarise)

By default, runSimulation() provides its own text/console-based progress bar. However, we can easily replace this with progressr-based reporting using the progressify() function:

library(SimDesign)
library(progressify)
handlers(global = TRUE)

res <- runSimulation(design = Design, replications = 100,
                     generate = Generate, analyse = Analyse,
                     summarise = Summarise) |> progressify()

When progressified, progressify() automatically silences SimDesign’s native console progress bar and routes the progress updates through progressr. This means you can use any of the supported progressr handlers, e.g., Shiny progress bars, system notifications, or CLI progress spinners.

Supported Functions

The progressify() function supports the following SimDesign functions:

• runSimulation()