Create Interactive Web Applications with the R Shiny Package

Course details

Create Interactive Web Applications with the R Shiny Package  is a 5-section course that highlights the features and functionality of the unique Shiny package created by RStudio. No matter what you do with R, Shiny will transform your R world by making it easy for you to turn your R analyses into interactive web applications without the necessity to program in HTML or JavaScript. These web applications are accessible over the Internet by anyone you choose and allow users to enter input parameters with user-friendly and familiar interactive controls such as sliders, drop-down menus, and text fields. It is easy to incorporate any number of outputs including downloadable plots, tables, formatted summaries and reports. Deploy your R data mining analyses as interactive web applications accessible by your students, colleagues or anyone in your organization, with the ability to generate and download summary tables and reports as required.

This particular course begins with a section introducing you to the Shiny package and template, describes how the fluidPage() function creates a user interface to your Shiny application, how to create inputs and outputs, and what the Server function does. Then introductory Shiny examples are presented. The second course section describes the unique Shiny property of "reactivity" in detail. The third section explains, with many examples, the basic Shiny layout elements including HTML 5 Shiny tags, sliders, tabsets, and numerous Shiny widgets. The fourth section goes into more detail about using HTML, dynamic input and output, how "scoping" works, and concludes with several project examples. Finally, the last course section extends all of the previous discussion with detailed analyses of several more extended examples of complete R Shiny projects.

In all cases, all R Shiny code and examples are provided in the course materials for you to download, to practice with, and/or to use as templates in new Shiny apps that you create. The Shiny R code for two dozen complete Shiny examples are provided, including several extended projects. This is a decidedly "hands-on" course and 'brings you up to speed' quickly on how to develop your own sophisticated Shiny applications. This is an intermediate level course, it is useful if you have some prior exposure to R software. You do not have to currently be a professional R programmer, but you should already understand the basics of using R, including basic R data structures and user-defined R functions.