Preliminary

The following is what we see on a browser after we run an example from shiny package. See http://rstudio.github.com/shiny/tutorial/#hello-shiny. Note that the R session needs to be on; i.e. R command prompt will not be returned unless we press Ctrl+C or ESC.

More shiny examples can be found on https://github.com/rstudio/shiny-examples shiny-examples.

~~shiny depends on websockets, caTools, bitops, digest packages.~~

Q & A:

Tutorial: http://wch.github.io/shiny/tutorial/
Layout: http://shiny.rstudio.com/articles/layout-guide.html
~~Q: If we run runExample('01_hello') in Rserve from an R client, we can continue our work in R client without losing the functionality of the GUI from shiny. Question: how do we kill the job?~~
If I run the example "01_hello", the browser only shows the control but not graph on Firefox? A: Use Chrome or Opera as the default browser.
Q: How difficult to put the code in Gist:github? A: Just create an account. Do not even need to create a repository. Just go to http://gist.github.com and create a new gist. The new gist can be secret or public. A secret gist can not be edited again after it is created although it works fine when it was used in runGist() function.

Deploy to run locally

Follow the instruction here, we can do as following (Tested on Windows OS)

Create a desktop shortcut with target "C:\Program Files\R\R-3.0.2\bin\R.exe" -e "shiny::runExample('01_hello')" . We can name the shortcut as we like, e.g. R+shiny
Double click the shortcut. The Windows Firewall will be popped up and say it block some features of the program. It does not matter if we choose Allow access or Cancel.
Look at the command prompt window (black background console window), it will say something like
```
Listening on port 7510
```
at the last line of the console.
Open your browser (Chrome or Firefox works), and type the address http://localhost:7510. You will see something magic happen.
If we don't want to play with it, we can close the browser and close the command console (hit 'x')too.

Deploy on cloud

https://www.r-bloggers.com/deploying-r-rstudio-and-shiny-applications-on-unbuntu-server/

Shiny server series part 1: setting up. It includes setting up A- and CNAME records on DigitalOcean.

Deploy on shinyapps.io

See Getting started with shinyapps.io page.

Limitations of the free account (5 applications, 25 active hours) on shinyapps.io.

Shinyapps.io can accept google account to sign up. I create an account and a test application/instance on

https://taichimd.shinyapps.io/stock/ (quantmod, ggplot2, reshape2, magrittr, rvest packages were used)
https://taichimd.shinyapps.io/tspgov (ggplot2, reshape2, magrittr, rvest, plotly)

The R packages our shiny app uses will be automatically downloaded by shinyapps.io service. See the package dependencies section on http://shiny.rstudio.com/articles/shinyapps.html.

After we run rsconnect() command to deploy our apps, a new subfolder rsconnect will be created under our app folder. I add this folder to .gitignore file.

For the shiny apps we uploaded to shinyapps.io, we can download them back. The download bundle will also include packrat subfolder (packrat.lock file and desc subfolder). See here for more about packrat.

Deploy to run remotely -shiny server

If we want to deploy our shiny apps to WWW, we need to install shiny server.

Following the guide on here, shiny-server is up smoothly on my Ubuntu machine. After I run the command sudo gdebi shiny-server-0.4.0.8-amd64.deb, shiny-server is started. Thanks to upstart in Ubuntu, shiny-server is automatically started whenever the machine is started.

Each app directory needs to be copied to /srv/shiny-server/ (which links to /opt/shiny-server/) directory using sudo.

The default port is 3838. That is, the remote computer can access the website using http://xxx.xxx.x.xx:3838/AppName.

Last but not the least, according to its web page, shiny-server is Experimental quality. Use at your own risk!.