CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rshinyintranet
Lost
Lost

Reputation: 351

Set up Shiny app on internal server

For security reasons, I need to run a Shiny app on an internal server. I am able to talk to IT about getting it there, but I am one of two people at my company who use R, so IT has never come across this situation before.

I have been looking online for ways to support a shiny app internally, but I have not been able to really find anything useful that has been posted recently. I know R changes frequently and is constantly improving, so articles from 2010 or 2014 aren't as helpful as I'd like.

I am looking for information I can bring to my IT department to help them get my app onto the internal server without them having to do a lot of research into R.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 3100

Answers (1)

EconomySizeAl
EconomySizeAl

Reputation: 230

The answer very much depends on your needs, depending on the complexity of the app and the number of simultaneous users. Since this is only internal, you may not need to go through the lengths described in Pork Chop's comment.

In the most basic instance, you can load RStudio on an existing server and use runApp (the normal way of initializing a shiny app). In the top left corner you will see an internal http address, as well as an "Open in Browser" button. Any user connected to the server can navigate to the internal address and use the app. If you are unlikely to have concurrent users, and don't mind dedicating an RStudio instance to the app, then this is the easiest way for IT to deal with it. Note that this implementation is very limited.

The next level up would be an open source Shiny Server Community Edition, which is free to use. The process to set it up is more complex, but is covered here: http://docs.rstudio.com/shiny-server/ Please note that this is the documentation for the pro version, however I believe that it is the same documentation for the open source version. All of the open source guides link to it on shinyapps.io. To download Shiny Server Community Edition visit here: https://www.rstudio.com/products/shiny/download-server/ or you can look at the differences in products here: https://www.rstudio.com/products/shiny/shiny-server/

Upvotes: 4

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