(This post is by Ben Prytherch)
Shiny is an R package for creating interactive applications.
When launching a Shiny app, a user interface appears, containing user inputs (sliders, buttons, text fields...) and outputs (plots, standard R output, LaTeX...). "Under the hood" is R code that takes input values and returns outputs.
Shiny is pretty user-friendly for those already experienced with R. There is a new structure to learn, but it doesn't take long to learn basic functionality. Once installed, it is well integrated into RStudio, with a button for launching your app locally or deploying it to a hosting server.
Here is the demos page on the Shiny website. The "Start Simple" section has a handful of minimalist apps that demonstrate core functions.
Note that there is are separate "UI.R" and "server.R" files displayed for these apps. Shiny apps used to require these two separate files in order to run. UI.R contains the code for creating a user inferface; server.R contains the code takes in the input from UI.R and creates the output that is sent back to UI.R. These days, all of this can be done in a single "app.R" file that has the UI and server code in two distinct sections.
Shiny's "Get Started" page is excellent.
Our department has an account through shinyapps.io that we use for hosting. We are on the "basic" plan, which allows 500 user-hours per month and hosting of an unlimited number of apps. If you'd like to host your apps here, let me know and I'll help you get connected.
Here are a couple collections of Shiny apps I've created for use in my classes:
This page hosts a collection of apps I made for use in STAT 342. Most have a lot going on in them and are meant to be incorporated into class lessons.
CSU Stats Teaching Apps is a page I just created. It has links to some older apps that I still use (and need to update). I would love to hosts lots of our apps here. Talk to me if you want to add to it or reorganize it or take over responsibility for maintaining it.
I'm happy to share the code for any of these.