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h3lib

What is h3lib?

h3lib is an R pacakge. But it’s also not an R package.

There aren’t any R functions you can call, nor can you import this package as-is into your own.

So, what is h3lib?

h3lib exposes Uber’s H3 source files (written in C) through Callable routines.

It’s these routines that you can then use in your own package.

How do I call these routines?

Firstly, take a look at /src/init.c. You’ll see a whole load of R_RegisterCCallable() calls:

// Indexing
R_RegisterCCallable("h3lib", "latLngToCell",         (DL_FUNC) &latLngToCell);
R_RegisterCCallable("h3lib", "cellToLatLng",         (DL_FUNC) &cellToLatLng);
R_RegisterCCallable("h3lib", "cellToBoundary",       (DL_FUNC) &cellToBoundary);

These are essentially saying

Here are some C functions I’d like you to register and make available to other packages

Now look in /inst/include/h3libapi.h. Here you’ll see all the function definitions for these registered routines

// Indexing
inline H3Error latLngToCell(const LatLng *g, int res, H3Index *out) {
  H3Error(*fun)(const LatLng*, int, H3Index*) =
    (H3Error(*)(const LatLng*, int, H3Index*)) R_GetCCallable("h3lib","latLngToCell");
  return fun(g, res, out);
}

The registered routines in init.c and the definitions in h3libapi.h should match. If there’s something missing, please let us know!

That explains which routines can be called, but you haven’t said how to call them?

Yes, I’m getting to that.

To demonstrate how to actually call these routines, let’s use the h3r package as an example.

Here are the steps to call the latLngToCell routine defined in h3lib

DESCRIPTION

In the DESCRIPTION file you need to link to {h3lib}

Depends:
  h3lib
LinkingTo:
  h3lib

src/init.c

If you look in the /src/ directory you’ll see various .c files.

The init.c also contains some R_RegisterCCallable() (because it too is exposing some of its C code to the wider R ecosystem).

But it also defines which Routines it wants to import

H3Error (*latLngToCell);
H3Error (*cellToLatLng);
H3Error (*cellToBoundary);
... etc

src/h3rIndexing.c

Then in a .c file, you need to include the h3libapi.h file, and that’s it!

(I’ve highlighted the bit of code that calls the latLngToCell routine)

#include "h3libapi.h"


SEXP h3rLatLngToCell(SEXP lat, SEXP lon, SEXP res) {

  R_xlen_t n = Rf_xlength(lat);
  R_xlen_t i;
  SEXP cells = PROTECT(Rf_allocVector(STRSXP, n));

  LatLng latLng;
  H3Index h3Index;
  // char str[17];

  for( i = 0; i < n; i++ ) {
    int ires = INTEGER(res)[i];

    sexpToLatLng(&latLng, lat, lon, i);

    h3error(latLngToCell(&latLng, ires, &h3Index), i);   // <-- LOOK HERE; this is calling h3lib latLngToCell
    // h3ToString(h3Index, str, 17);

    SET_STRING_ELT(cells, i, h3ToSexpString(h3Index));
  }

  UNPROTECT(1);
  return cells;
}

Working Example

Let’s build our own example that uses cellToLatLng to build {sf} polygons.

For this we can link to both {h3lib} and {sfheaders}

library(Rcpp)

cppFunction(
  
  depends = c(
    "h3lib"
    , "geometries"  ## <- required because sfheaders depends on it
    , "sfheaders"   ## <- for building sf objects through C++ code
    )
  , includes = c(
    '#include "h3libapi.h"'
    , '#include "sfheaders/sfg/polygon/sfg_polygon.hpp"'
    )
  , code = '
    SEXP cellToPolygon(SEXP h3) {
    
      R_xlen_t n = Rf_xlength(h3);
      R_xlen_t i, j;
      
      Rcpp::List poylgons(n);  // for storing the sfg_polygons
      
      for(i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
        H3Index idx;
        CellBoundary cb;
        
        // convert the SEXP cell (stringVector) to H3Index
        int e1 = stringToH3(CHAR(STRING_ELT(h3, i)), &idx);
        // TODO: handle the error-code `e1`
        
        // Convert H3Index to CellBoundary object
        int e2 = cellToBoundary(idx, &cb);
        // TODO: handle the rror-code `e2`;
        
        // Convert the CellBoundary to sfg_polygon
        // where sfheaders::sfg_polygon accepts a matrix or data-frame
        Rcpp::NumericMatrix latLng(cb.numVerts, 2);
        for(j = 0; j < cb.numVerts; ++j) {
          latLng(j, 0) = radsToDegs(cb.verts[i].lng);
          latLng(j, 1) = radsToDegs(cb.verts[j].lat);
        }
        poylgons[i] = sfheaders::sfg::sfg_polygon(latLng, "XY");
      }
      return poylgons;
    }
  '
)

cellToPolygon(c("8cbe63562a54bff","8cbe635631103ff"))
# [[1]]
# [[1]]
#          [,1]      [,2]
# [1,] 144.9833 -37.82030
# [2,] 144.9833 -37.82019
# [3,] 144.9833 -37.82012
# [4,] 144.9833 -37.82016
# [5,] 144.9833 -37.82026
# [6,] 144.9833 -37.82033
# [7,] 144.9833 -37.82030
# 
# attr(,"class")
# [1] "XY"      "POLYGON" "sfg"    
# 
# [[2]]
# [[1]]
#          [,1]      [,2]
# [1,] 144.9675 -37.81851
# [2,] 144.9675 -37.81840
# [3,] 144.9675 -37.81833
# [4,] 144.9675 -37.81837
# [5,] 144.9675 -37.81847
# [6,] 144.9675 -37.81854
# [7,] 144.9675 -37.81851
# 
# attr(,"class")
# [1] "XY"      "POLYGON" "sfg"

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They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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