Shiny Essentials

JSM 2018
Sat, Jul 28, 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
CC-East 11

Description

Shiny is an R package that makes it easy to build interactive web apps straight from R. You can host stand-alone apps on a webpage or embed them in R Markdown documents or build dashboards. This short course will introduce you to building web applications and dashboards with Shiny, reactive programming, and customizing and deploying your apps for others to use. Please bring a laptop with you.

Slides

0 - Welcome
1 - Getting started
2 - Understanding reactivity
3 - Designing UI
4 - Dashboards

Additional resources

• Shiny Dev Center
• Shiny User Showcase
• DataCamp: Building Web Apps with Shiny
• For questions: RStudio Community

Logistics

Equipment

Please bring a laptop with a web browser and a power cord.

Setup

Option 1: RStudio Cloud :cloud:

I have set up an RStudio Cloud space for the workshop, with all the packages you will need pre-installed. The space will also include all the starter code you will need for the exercises.

If you choose to use this space, you should not need to install any software or packages (and you don’t need to worry about the rest of the instructions listed below).

Option 2: Local Installation :computer:

However if you would like to use your own setup, please make sure that you have R and RStudio installed.

• R - 3.5.0 above: https://cran.r-project.org/
• RStudio - 1.2.247 or above: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/preview/

It is also recommended that you pre-install the packages we will use at the workshop. The package installation instructions are as follows

# Install

from_cran <- c("DT", "glue", "flexdashboard", "rmarkdown", "shiny", 
               "shinydashboard", "shinythemes", "tidyverse")

install.packages(from_cran, repos = "http://cran.rstudio.com")

# Load

library(DT)
library(glue)
... # load the remaining packages similarly

The install.packages command may install additional packages, which can take some time. Hence it is recommended that you install them ahead of time, if possible.

If you will be using your own setup, and especially if you have never used Shiny before, please try the following before you arrive:

In RStudio, go to File :arrow_right: New File :arrow_right: Shiny Web App to create a new Shiny app, and click on the Run App button. If this works without any issues, you’re ready to go!