Chapter 1 What is Shiny?

For Demonstration purposes only. Under development.

Shiny is a R package that underpins a web development framework to allow users to build web apps using the R progamming language only. In other words, you can turn any R code into a web app without the need to use any other programming language.

1.1 The basic components of a Shiny app

Although Shiny apps can do fairly advanced things, a simple app is really easy to build. Its main components are:

  1. a user interface
  2. a server-side function

These two components are typically put in two separate files but they can be put in a single file too (e.g. app.R). Copy the above code chunk to your R terminal and run it.

Here is an example for a first Shiny app. You can run it in your local R terminal or R Studio during development. But the goal is to host them on a website, which you can do so easily on DataLabs (link to DataLabs docs to be added) (or with your organization or other web hosting providers).

1.2 How can I get help or training?

There are number of free training available. Please also feel free to contact the author to discuss your requirements.