shinylive

This repository contains an R package for exporting Shiny applications as Shinylive applications.

This repository is not the same as the https://github.com/posit-dev/shinylive repository. That repository is used to generate the Shinylive assets distribution, which is a bundle containing HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and wasm files. The R package in this repository downloads the assets and uses them to create Shinylive applications.

Twin shinylive python package: https://github.com/posit-dev/py-shinylive

Installation

You can install the development version of shinylive from GitHub via:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("posit-dev/r-shinylive")

Usage

(Optional) Create a basic shiny application in a new directory myapp/:

# Copy "Hello World" from `{shiny}`
system.file("examples", "01_hello", package="shiny") |>
    fs::dir_copy("myapp", overwrite = TRUE)

Once you have a Shiny application in myapp/ and would like turn it into a Shinylive app in site/:

shinylive::export("myapp", "site")

Then you can preview the application by running a web server and visiting it in a browser:

httpuv::runStaticServer("site/", port=8008)

At this point, you can deploy the site/ directory to any static web hosting service.

Multiple applications

If you have multiple applications that you want to put on the same site, you can export them to subdirectories of the site, so that they can all share the same Shinylive assets. You can do this with the --subdir option:

shinylive::export("myapp1", "site", subdir = "app1")
shinylive::export("myapp2", "site", subdir = "app2")

Shinylive asset management

Each version of the Shinylive R package is associated with a particular version of the Shinylive web assets. (See the releases here.)

To see which version of this R package you have, and which version of the web assets it is associated with, simply run shinylive::assets_info() in your R session. It will also show which asset versions you have already installed locally:

shinylive::assets_info()
#> shinylive R package version:  0.0.1
#> shinylive web assets version: 0.1.7
#>
#> Local cached shinylive asset dir:
#>     /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive
#>
#> Installed assets:
#>     /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive/0.1.7
#>     /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive/0.1.6

The web assets will be downloaded and cached the first time you run shinylive::export(). Or, you can run shinylive::assets_download() to fetch them manually.

shinylive::assets_download("0.1.5")
#> Downloading shinylive v0.1.5...
#> Unzipping to /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive/

You can remove old versions with shinylive::assets_cleanup(). This will remove all versions except the one that the Python package wants to use:

shinylive::assets_cleanup()
#> Keeping version 0.1.7
#> Removing /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive/0.1.6
#> Removing /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive/0.1.5

To remove a specific version, use shinylive::assets_remove():

shinylive::assets_remove("0.1.5")
#> Removing /Users/username/Library/Caches/shinylive/0.1.5

Known limitations

A single quarto document can have both shinylive-python and shinylive-r code blocks, but shinylive-r code block must come first.
- Details: Only the first shinylive code block will be initialized. Currently posit-dev/shinylive-py does not know about shinylive-r code blocks.
- Details: This should be (naturally) fixed in the next release of posit-dev/shinylive-py.
The current R common files contain files for python's pyodide and pyright. These should be removed in the future to make smaller bundles / faster loading.

Development

Setup - shinylive assets

Works with latest GitHub version of posit-dev/shinylive (>= v0.2.0).

Before linking the shinylive assets to the asset cache folder, you must first build the shiny live assets:

## In your shinylive assets repo
# cd PATH/TO/posit-dev/shinylive

# Generate the shiny live assets
make submodules all

Then link the assets (using the {shinylive} R package) to the asset cache folder so that changes to the assets are automatically in your cached shinylive assets:

# Link to your local shinylive repo
shinylive::assets_install_link("PATH/TO/posit-dev/shinylive")

Setup - quarto

In your quarto project, call the following lines in the terminal to install the updated shinylive quarto extension:

# Go to the quarto project directory
cd local/quarto

# Install the updated shinylive quarto extension
quarto add quarto-ext/shinylive

By default, the extension will used the installed {shinylive} R package. To use the local {shinylive} R package, run the following in your R session to update the quarto extension locally:

if (!require("pkgload")) install.packages("pkgload")

shinylive_lua <- file.path("local", "quarto", "_extensions", "quarto-ext", "shinylive", "shinylive.lua")
shinylive_lua |>
    brio::read_file() |>
    sub(
        pattern = "shinylive::quarto_ext()",
        replacement = "pkgload::load_all('../../', quiet = TRUE); shinylive::quarto_ext()",
        fixed = TRUE
    ) |>
    brio::write_file(shinylive_lua)

Execute - `export()`

Export a local app to a directory and run it:

pkgload::load_all()
# Delete prior
unlink("local/shiny-apps-out/")
export("local/shiny-apps/simple-r", "local/shiny-apps-out")
#> Run the following in an R session to serve the app:
#>   httpuv::runStaticServer("local/shiny-apps-out", port=8008)

# Host the local directory
httpuv::runStaticServer("local/shiny-apps-out", port=8008)

rpodcast/r-shinylive