Shiny

Shiny

Shiny is an open-source R package that provides an elegant and powerful web framework for building web applications using R. It makes it easy to build interactive web apps straight from R.
Shiny image
r web-development data-visualization

Shiny: Open-Source Web Frameworks

Build interactive web apps with Shiny, an open-source R package providing a powerful and elegant web framework for web applications using R.

What is Shiny?

Shiny is an open-source R package that provides a powerful framework for building interactive web applications using the R programming language. It allows R developers and data scientists to create fully fledged web apps and dashboards by integrating R code with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Some key features of Shiny include:

  • Allows you to turn data analyses made in R into interactive web apps and dashboards, without requiring knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript
  • Lets you customize and control the app's appearance by writing HTML and CSS
  • Supports reactive programming to automatically update outputs and figures when inputs change
  • Works with any kind of R output including plots, tables, prints, etc.
  • Includes many built-in widgets like sliders, pickers, tables, etc. that provide interactivity
  • Integrates seamlessly with many R packages and tools like ggplot2, dplyr, etc.
  • Can be easily deployed to shinyapps.io cloud or any Shiny Server for sharing

With Shiny, data scientists can make their R data products highly interactive, shareable and put them into production faster. It bridges the gap between data analysis and building web apps without having to learn many web technologies.

Shiny Features

Features

  1. Reactive programming framework
  2. Built on R
  3. Easily create dashboards and web apps
  4. Host apps on Shiny Server or Shinyapps.io
  5. Integrate with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML

Pricing

  • Open Source
  • Free
  • Subscription-Based (Shinyapps.io)

Pros

Open source and free

Large user community

Extensive documentation and tutorials

Integrates seamlessly with R and R packages

Highly customizable and extensible

Cons

Can have a steep learning curve

Hosting and scaling apps takes more work

Not as robust for large complex apps as other frameworks

Limited UI widget options compared to JavaScript frameworks


The Best Shiny Alternatives

Top Development and Web Application Frameworks and other similar apps like Shiny

Here are some alternatives to Shiny:

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Streamlit

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Voila

Voila is an open-source Python library that allows you to quickly create interactive web applications from Jupyter notebooks. It is designed to convert Jupyter notebooks into standalone web apps with interactive widgets, plots, and other rich output without requiring any additional coding.Some key features of Voila include:Seamless conversion of Jupyter...
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Dash by Plotly

Dash by Plotly is an open-source Python framework for building analytical web applications and dashboards. It makes it easy to build reactive, customizable user interfaces for data visualization and analysis without needing to know JavaScript.Some key features of Dash include:Built on top of Flask, Plotly.js, and React.js, so it is...
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