Deploy Shiny app with Flexdashboard

Question

I know how to deploy a shiny app using http://www.shinyproxy.io/. Basically I just need server.R and ui.R. Then using docker it's a pretty easy job.

However, when using flexdashboard, I only have the .rmd file. How can I implement this deploy now?

Answer 1

Rendering Shiny R Markdown documents requires server-side support. This is a feature of the open source Shiny Server product (see the Shiny Server documentation) which doesn't appear to have been implemented by ShinyProxy.

If you wanted to add support to ShinyProxy it wouldn't be terribly difficult; there are a few details to work out but essentially the proxy just needs to use rmarkdown::run() instead of shiny::runApp().

Answer 2

This is actually supported out of the box by ShinyProxy. You just need to add yourfile.Rmd file in the docker image (i.e. add the relevant commands in your Dockerfile), and then use the

docker-cmd: ["R", "-e rmarkdown::run('/path/to/yourFile.Rmd')"]

in the relevant field of the apps block. Full details on app configuration here