WebApps 6502

Session 1.1–Introduction to R Shiny

Welcome 👋

Getting to Know Each Other 🗣

  • Name and background
  • Reasons for taking the course
  • Experience with programming
  • Experience with R and Shiny
  • What you hope to learn

Today’s Schedule

  • 9:00 - 10:20: Introduction to R Shiny
  • 10:20 - 10:40: Break ☕
  • 10:40 - 12:00: Shiny Basics
  • 12:00 - 1:00: Lunch 🍕🥤
  • 1:00 - 2:20: Scatter Plot App, Part 1
  • 2:20 - 2:40: Break ☕
  • 2:40 - 4:00: Scatter Plot App, Part 2

Learning Objectives

After this workshop, you will know:

  • What Shiny is and how it works
  • The elements of a Shiny app including a user interface and server
  • How to create a simple Shiny app
  • How to deploy a Shiny app

Exploring Shiny

What is Shiny?

  • Shiny is an R package developed by Posit that makes it easy to build interactive web apps straight from R
  • No HTML, CSS, or JavaScript required
  • Shiny apps can be hosted on the web or run locally
  • Makes it easy to explore your data and share your analysis

What You Can Do with Shiny

  • Data Exploration: Utilize interactive widgets to filter and sort data dynamically
  • Basic Visualizations: Create real-time, interactive graphs and charts from datasets
  • Advanced Analytics: Integrate R’s robust statistical and machine learning capabilities for in-depth analysis
  • Interactive Reports: Build dynamic reports that update based on user input or live data
  • Production-Grade Dashboards: Develop complex, multi-page dashboards with user authentication and data streaming

Flavors of Shiny

  • R Shiny: The original framework, allowing R users to build interactive web applications directly within R
  • Shiny for Python: Extends Shiny’s capabilities to Python, enabling Python users to create Shiny applications using Python code
  • Shiny Live: Enables you to run apps off the user’s browser rather than having to deploy them to a server (only available in Python right now)
  • Shiny Express: A simplified version of Shiny for Python aimed at rapid development and deployment of applications with less coding and configuration required
  • Quarto Dashboards: Not a Shiny app per se, but can connected to a Shiny server for increased interactivity

User Demos

  • Have a look at the Shiny gallery
  • Pick an app that you like?
  • One thing you would like to learn from that app?
  • One thing that you would improve
  • Discuss with a neighbor
05:00

Feature Demos

  • Now let’s look at feature demos
  • What widgets, layouts, or features are you interested in?
  • How would you use them in your own apps?
05:00

Professional Apps

  • Here is a selection of modern, professional Shiny Apps
  • These are mainly for inspiration, but try to find the code on GitHub and see how much you can understand
05:00

Getting Started with Shiny

  • Open RStudio
  • Start a folder for the workshop
  • Install the shiny package (if not installed already)
  • Create a new Shiny app
    • (File > New File > Shiny Web App)
  • Run the Geyser App
  • Try opening it in a browser
05:00

Challenge

  • Look at the faithful dataset in R (hint: ?faithful)
  • Create a Shiny app that displays a histogram of the eruptions column
  • Change the labels accordingly
  • What kind of distribution do you see?
10:00

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