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io - Getting started

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Shinyapps.io - Getting started Start Build Improve Shar

L A S T U P D AT E D : 3 0 M AY 2 0 1 7
Deployment
B Y: A N D Y K I P P Deploying Shiny apps to
the web
Shinyapps.io is a platform as a service (PaaS) for hosting Shiny web apps (/articles/deployment-
web.html)
(applications). This article will show you how to create a shinyapps.io account and
deploy your first application to the cloud. Shinyapps.io - Getting
started
Before you get started with shinyapps.io, you will need: (/articles/shinyapps.html)

Shinyapps.io -
An R development environment, such as the RStudio IDE Authentication and
Authorization Model
The latest version of the rsconnect (https://github.com/rstudio/rsconnect) R
(/articles/shinyapps-
package auth.html)

Shinyapps.io - Setting up

How to install rsconnect custom domains

(/articles/custom-
domains.html)
The rsconnect package deploys applications to the shinyapps.io service. The
Shinyapps.io - Sharing data
rsconnect package is now hosted on CRAN. You can install it by running the R
across sessions
command: (/articles/share-data.html)

Shinyapps.io - Migrating
install.packages('rsconnect') authentication
(/articles/migration.html)
After the rsconnect package has been installed, load it into your R session: Distribution
Bookmarking
library(rsconnect)

Create a shinyapps.io account

Go to shinyapps.io (https://www.shinyapps.io) and click “Dashboard.” The site will ask
you to sign in using your email and password, your Google account, or your GitHub
account.

The first time you sign in, shinyapps.io prompts you to set up your account.
Shinyapps.io uses the account name as the domain name for all your apps. Account
names must be between four and 63 characters and can contain only letters,
numbers, and dashes (-). Account names may not begin with a number or a dash,
and they can not end with a dash (see RFC 952 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc952)).
Some account names may be reserved.

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Configure
Shiny (/) rsconnect
from
Once you set up your account in shinyapps.io, you can configure the rsconnect
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package to use your account. Shinyapps.io automatically generates a token and
secret for you, which the rsconnect package can use to access your account.
Retrieve your token from the shinyapps.io dashboard. Tokens are listed under
Tokens in the menu at the top right of the shinyapps dashboard (under your avatar).

You can configure the rsconnect package to use your account with two methods:

Method 1
Click the show button on the token page. A window will pop up that shows the full
command to configure your account using the appropriate parameters for the
rsconnect::setAccountInfo function. Copy this command to your clip board, and
then paste it into the command line of RStudio and click enter.

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Method 2
Run the ‘setAccountInfo’ function from the rsconnect package passing in the token
and secret from the Profile / Tokens page.

rsconnect::setAccountInfo(name="<ACCOUNT>", token="<TOKEN>", secret="

<SECRET>")

Once you have configured your rsconnect installation, you can use it to upload
applications to shinyapps.io. In the second part of this guide, we will build a demo
application, upload it to shinyapps.io, and create a password for the application.

If you’re using the RStudio IDE, you can manage your shinyapps.io accounts by
going to Tools -> Global Options -> Publishing.

A Demo app
For this guide, we created an RStudio project named “demo” that contains a Shiny
application to upload to shinyapps.io. Follow these steps to create your own Shiny
app.

Install application dependencies

The demo application we will deploy requires the ggplot2 package and the shiny
package. Ensure that any package required by your application is installed locally
before you deploy your application:

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Shiny (/)
install.packages(c('ggplot2', 'shiny'))

from

ui.R and server.R

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We placed two Shiny source files, ui.R and server.R , in our demo application.
You can cut and paste the code below to make your own Shiny application:

server.R

library(shiny)

library(ggplot2)

function(input, output) {

dataset <- reactive({

diamonds[sample(nrow(diamonds), input$sampleSize),]

})

output$plot <- renderPlot({

p <- ggplot(dataset(), aes_string(x=input$x, y=input$y)) + geom_point()

if (input$color != 'None')

p <- p + aes_string(color=input$color)

facets <- paste(input$facet_row, '~', input$facet_col)

if (facets != '. ~ .')

p <- p + facet_grid(facets)

if (input$jitter)

p <- p + geom_jitter()
if (input$smooth)

p <- p + geom_smooth()

print(p)

}, height=700)

ui.R

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Shiny (/)
library(shiny)
library(ggplot2)
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dataset <- diamonds

fluidPage(

titlePanel("Diamonds Explorer"),

sidebarPanel(

sliderInput('sampleSize', 'Sample Size', min=1, max=nrow(dataset),

value=min(1000, nrow(dataset)), step=500, round=0),

selectInput('x', 'X', names(dataset)),

selectInput('y', 'Y', names(dataset), names(dataset)[[2]]),

selectInput('color', 'Color', c('None', names(dataset))),

checkboxInput('jitter', 'Jitter'),

checkboxInput('smooth', 'Smooth'),

selectInput('facet_row', 'Facet Row', c(None='.', names(dataset))),

selectInput('facet_col', 'Facet Column', c(None='.', names(dataset)))

),

mainPanel(

plotOutput('plot')

)
)

Test your application

Test that your application works by running it locally. Set your working directory
(http://www.rstudio.com/ide/docs/using/workspaces) to your app directory, and then
run:

library(shiny)
runApp()

If you’re using the RStudio IDE, you can also run your application by clicking the Run
App button on the editor toolbar.

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Shiny (/)
Now
from that the application works, let’s upload it to shinyapps.io.
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Deploying apps
To deploy your application, use the deployApp command from the rsconnect
packages.

library(rsconnect)

deployApp()

If you’re using the RStudio IDE, you can also deploy your application by clicking the
Publish button while viewing the application.

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Once the deployment finishes, your browser should open automatically to your newly
deployed application.

Congratulations! You’ve deployed your first application. :-)

Feel free to make changes to your code and run deployApp again. rsconnect can
deploy an app much more quickly after the first deployment.

Package dependencies
When you deploy your application, the rsconnect package attempts to detect the
packages that your application uses. rsconnect sends this list of packages and
their dependencies along with your application to the shinyapps.io service. Then
shinyapps.io builds and installs the packages into the R library for your application.
The first time you deploy your application, it may take some time to build these
packages (depending on how many packages are used). However, you will not wait
for these packages to build during future deployments (unless you upgrade or
downgrade a package).

Package sources
Currently the shinyapps.io service supports deploying packages installed from CRAN,
GitHub, and BioConductor. We will look to add support for R-Forge packages in the
future.

Important note on GitHub packages

Only packages installed from GitHub with devtools::install_github in version
1.4 (or later) of devtools are supported. Packages installed with an earlier version
of devtools must be reinstalled before you can deploy your application. If you get

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an error such as “PackageSourceError” when you attempt to deploy, check that

Shiny (/)
you have installed any package from Github with devtools 1.4 or later.
from

Application instances
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Shinyapps.io hosts each app on its own virtualized server, called an instance. Each
instance runs an identical copy of the code and packages that you deployed (called
the image).

When you deploy an app, shinyapps.io creates a new image with the updated code
and packages, and starts one or more instances with the new image. If the app was
previously deployed, shinyapps.io shuts down and destroys the old instances.
Consider a few implications of this arrangement:

1) Data written by an application to the local filesystem of an instance will be

lost when you re-deploy the app. Additionally, the distributed nature of the
shinyapps.io platform means that instances may be shut down and re-created at any
time for maintenance or to recover from server failures.

2) It is possible to have more than one instance of an application. This situation

means that multiple instances of an application do not share a local filesystem.
A file written to one instance will not be available to another instance.

Shinyapps.io limits the amount of system resources an instance can consume. The
amount of resources available to an instance will depend on its type. The table below
outlines the various instance types and how much memory is allowed. By default,
shinyapps.io deploys all applications on ‘medium’ instances, which are allowed
to use 512 MB of memory.

Instance Type Memory

small 256 MB

medium (default) 512 MB

large 1024 MB

xlarge 2048 MB

xxlarge 4096 MB

Note: Instance types and limits are not finalized; RStudio may change them in the
future.

Application logging
If you’re having problems with your application, it may be helpful to be able to see the
log messages it’s producing. You can use the rsconnect::showLogs() function to
show the log messages of a deployed application. This log will include both stdout

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(log lines producted via print or cat ) and stderr (log lines produced by
Shiny (/)
message , warning , stop ). You can even use the streaming=TRUE option to
from
specify that you want to continuously monitor the file for changes; this will listen for
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log messages until you interrupt R (typically by pressing Escape ). If you deployed
your application using an older version of the rsconnect package, you will need to
redeploy it ( deployApp(upload=FALSE) ) before you can use logging.

Configuring applications
You can change the instance type used by an application with the configureApp
function from the rsconnect package. To change the instance type of your
application (here from medium to small), run:

rsconnect::configureApp("APPNAME", size="small")

This change will redeploy your application using the small instance type.

You can also change the instance type used by an application from the shinyapps.io
dashboard. To do this, log in to shinyapps.io, select the application that you wish to
configure, and then open the Settings tab.

To learn more about instances and other details of the shinyapps.io architecture, read
Scaling and Performance Tuning (scaling-and-tuning.html). The guide will also show
you several advanced options for fine tuning the performance of your apps on
shinyapps.io.

Application authentication
With shinyapps.io, you can limit the access to your application by enabling
authentication. Only users who log-in with valid credentials will be able to view or use
the app.

To enable authentication in the administrative UI, select the application to modify and
click on the Users tab.

Here is a sample application with the default visibility settings:

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Change the Application Visibility to Private and click on Save Settings. Changing the
Shiny (/)
visibility of your application will require a restart of the application. The Owner of the
from
account and other members of the account will automatically be included in the list of
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authorized users.

After the application is restarted you can add authorized users by entering their email
addresses and clicking on Add User.

Each user will receive an email from shinyapps.io with an invite to view your
application. If a user does not already have an authenticated account on
shinyapps.io, they will be able to create one by authenticating through one of the
following three methods:

Google Authorization
GitHub authorization
Shinyapps.io authentication

Shinyapps.io will prompt each visitor to your app for a username and password if they
have not been authenticated. Only users who log-in with valid credentials will be able
to view or use the app.

If you currently use the pre-beta authentication scheme, please upgrade to the new
system by January 28, 2015 as we will be deprecating support for the old
authentication system during the beta. For instructions on how to upgrade, please
read the guide here (migration.html).

Terminate an app

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You can remove an app on shinyapps.io from the web with the terminateApp
Shiny (/)
command. To use it, run
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terminateApp("<your app's name>")

terminateApp requires one argument, the name of the app that you would like to
terminate (as a character string). This name should correspond with one of the apps
in your shinyapps.io account.

When you run terminateApp shinyapps.io will close your app, but the app will
remain archived in your shinyapps.io account. This creates efficiencies if you later
decide to redeploy your app with deployApp .

You can also terminate an app from your shinyapps.io dashboard. To do this, log in to
shinyapps.io, select the app that you wish to terminate and then click “Archive.”

Getting help
To seek and share advice about shinyapps.io, please visit the Shinyapps.io google
group (https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/shinyapps-users).

Recap
Shinyapps.io is an online service for hosting Shiny apps in the cloud. RStudio takes
care of all of the details of hosting the app and maintaining the server, which lets you
focus on writing great apps!

To use shinyApps.io

Install the rsconnect (https://github.com/rstudio/rsconnect) R package from github

Create an account at shinyapps.io (https://www.shinyapps.io)
Use the tokens generated by shinyapps.io to configure your rsconnect
package.
Deploy apps with rsconnect::deployApp

Terminate apps with rsconnect::terminateApp

You can also use shinyapps.io to create secure apps, and manage your authorized
users.

Learn more
For more on this topic, see the following resources:

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 Shinyapps.io Overview & Tour (https://resources.rstudio.com/vimeo-

Shiny (/)
webinars/shinyapps-io-overview-tour)
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If you have questions about this article or would like to discuss ideas presented here,
please post on RStudio Community (https://community.rstudio.com/c/shiny). Our
developers monitor these forums and answer questions periodically. See help (/help)
for more help with all things Shiny.

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