Interactive Restaurant Shiny Application using Yelp Data

Objective: Using the Yelp Dataset Challenge, construct a Shiny application that allows users to search for restaurants with specific amenities and a range of review ratings (stars). Display the resulting search on a map the can be zoomed and panned.

• Read and process data set
• Construct data set suitable for mapping
• Display map using Leaflet
• Build Shiny application for interactive searching

The first step is to read and process the JSON data.

• Focus on the business reviews data set.
• Evaluated types of businesses and selected Restaurants as the source of data for the application.

The second step is to create a subset of data that will be used for the shiny application:

• Identified criteria for searching in shiny application:
  • Business identification - Anonymized name of restaurant
  • Latitude & Longitude - geographical location of restaurant
  • Stars - average review of restaurant
  • Take-out - does the restaurant offer to-go food.
  • Takes Reservations- does the restaurant accept reservations
  • Wi-fi - does the restaurant offer free wi-fi
  • Catering - does the restaurant have catering services

Finally, the pre-processed data is saved off to a file for use in the Shiny application to facilitate fast rendering of the map.

Leaflet is JavaScript library that works as an add-on to R and allows for the development of interactive maps.

• Leaflet handles selecting the underlying map and provides for zooming and panning automatically.
• Developer specifies latitude and longitude of locations of interest (i.e, restaurants) and an what should “pop-up” when a users clicks on an icon on the map (i.e., the business id)

library(leaflet,quietly=TRUE)
library(maps,quietly=TRUE)

    # Read pre-processed data
    bizrates<-read.table("bizrates.dat")

    # Build out a leaflet object
    mymap<-leaflet() %>% 
        addTiles() %>% 
        addTiles(urlTemplate = "http://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/light_all/{z}/{x}/{y}.png")  %>%  
        mapOptions(zoomToLimits="always") %>%             
        addMarkers(lat=bizrates$biz_rest.latitude,lng=bizrates$biz_rest.longitude,
                       clusterOptions = markerClusterOptions(),popup=bizrates$biz_rest.business_id) 

    # And display it
    mymap

Unfortunately it does not render in RPresentation slides (see the HTML in github to see it in action; image is on next page). The report developed in association with his presentation has a live working version of the map.

More on leaflet can be found here: https://rstudio.github.io/leaflet/

• It works!
  • See companion report for working version of map.
  • UI.R/Server.R and preprocessed data available at “https://github.com/crogger62/Capstone-Yelp”“
• Can easily add additional searchable parameters found in the Yelp businesses review file for finer grained search parameters.
• Could broaden data set to include other food establishments as well.
• Alternate business groupings, e.g., care repair.
• Requires:
  • Preprocessing of data to broaden or refocus search parameters.
  • Reconfigure Shiny application display to accommodate search parameters