This post was originally published here
What is Shiny?
Shiny is an R package (install.packages("shiny")) for making your outputs interactive. Furthermore, Shiny creates web apps meaning your work can be shared online with people who don’t use R. In other words: with Shiny, R people can make websites without ever learning Javascript etc.
I am completely obsessed with Shiny and these days I end up presenting most of my work in a Shiny app.
If it’s not worth putting in a Shiny app it’s not worth doing.
Your first Shiny app
Getting started with Shiny is actually a lot easier than a lot of people make it out to be. So I created a very short (9 slides) presentation outlining my 5-step programme for your first Shiny app.
This is the app: https://riinu.shinyapps.io/shiny_testing/
This is the presentation: http://rpubs.com/riinu/shiny
And here are the steps (also included in the presentation):
STEP 0: install.packages("shiny"). Use RStudio.
STEP 1: Create a script called app.R using this skeleton:
https://gist.github.com/riinuots/c6ec0691633df2929adc7de90bdbc792
STEP 2: Copy your plot code into the renderPlot function.
STEP 3: Add a sliderInput to your User Interface (ui). A slider is just one of the many Shiny widgets you could be using: https://shiny.rstudio.com/gallery/widget-gallery.html
STEP 4: Tell your Server you wish the dplyr::filter() to use the value from the slider. All inputs from the User Interface (ui) are stored in input$variable_name: replace the 2007 with input$year.
STEP 5 (optional): Add animate = TRUE.
Press Control+Shift+Enter or the “Run App” button. You now have a Shiny app running on your computer. To deploy it to the internet, e.g. like I’ve done in the link above, see this.