Using the Stan Math C++ Library

The StanHeaders package contains no R functions. To use the Stan Math Library in other packages, it is sufficient to specify

in the DESCRIPTION file of another package (possibly with a minimum version). If, in addition, the other package needs to utilize the MCMC, optimization, variational inference, or parsing facilities of the Stan Library, then it is also necessary to include the src directory of StanHeaders in the other package’s PKG_CPPFLAGS with something like

The following is a minimal example of using the Stan Math library via Rcpp::sourceCpp: to minimize the function \(\left(\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{a}\right)^\top \left(\mathbf{x} - \mathbf{a}\right)\)

// [[Rcpp::depends(BH)]]
// [[Rcpp::depends(RcppEigen)]]
// [[Rcpp::depends(StanHeaders)]]
#include <Rcpp.h>
#include <RcppEigen.h>
#include <stan/math.hpp>  // pulls in everything; could be more specific with included headers

// [[Rcpp::export]]
double f(Eigen::VectorXd x, Eigen::VectorXd a) {  // objective function in doubles
  return stan::math::dot_self( (x - a).eval() );  // dot_self() is a dot product with the same vector
}
stan::math::var f(Eigen::Matrix<stan::math::var, Eigen::Dynamic, 1> x, Eigen::VectorXd a) {
  return stan::math::dot_self( (x - stan::math::to_var(a)).eval() );  // same but with vars
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
std::vector<double> g(Eigen::VectorXd x, Eigen::VectorXd a) {  // gradient by AD using Stan
  auto x_var = stan::math::to_var(x); std::vector<stan::math::var> theta; std::vector<double> grad;
  for (int k = 0; k < x.rows(); k++) theta.push_back(x_var.coeff(k));
  stan::math::var lp = f(x_var, a); lp.grad(theta, grad); return grad;
}

optim(rnorm(3), fn = f, gr = g, a = c(1, 2, 3), method = "BFGS")$par  # Rcpp exported f and g
#> [1] 1 2 3

Using the Stan Math C++ Library

Stan Development Team

2018-10-09