Getting Started: RStudio and Shiny

hi Jake!

1. Install R and RStudio

To run a Shiny app, you need both the R programming language and the RStudio interface installed on your computer.

  • Install R: First, navigate to the CRAN website. Select your operating system (Windows, macOS, or Linux) and download the latest release of R. Run the downloaded installer using the default settings.
  • Install RStudio: Next, go to the Posit RStudio download page. Download the free RStudio Desktop version for your operating system and run the installer.

2. Download the data files

The shiny interactives require a folder that contains the app.r file, which generates the interactive, and a data folder, which contains the underlying data.

The following folder has three shiny app folders, each with an app.r file and a data foler. Download these to your drive.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-wzepmUGuibcFPA_AiqKEKpH03mYDcbS?usp=drive_link

  • oedipodonae_module_1 walks students through basic data exploration of the number of occurrences and their climatic and geographic dimensions for the genera/ species of the Oedipodonae in western NA.

  • oedipodonae_module_2 walks students through developing CART models.

  • oedipodonae_module_3 walks students through developing Random Forest models.

3. Open and Run a Shiny App Locally

Once both programs are installed, follow these steps to launch your interactive application:

  1. Launch RStudio: Open the RStudio application on your computer.
  2. Open the File: Go to the top menu and select File > Open File…. Navigate to the folder on your local drive where your app.R file is saved, select it, and click Open.
  3. Run the App: With the app.R script open in the top-left editor pane, look for the green Run App play button at the top right corner of the script window. Click it to launch the app.

Note: If a yellow banner appears at the top of your script asking you to install the shiny package (or if it throws a “package not found” error), you can install it by typing install.packages("shiny") into the Console tab at the bottom left and pressing Enter.