Continuous Installation

Jonathan M. Hill

2018-10-16

RInno supports continuous installation of shiny apps through APIs to public/private BitBucket and GitHub repos. If you follow the directions in this vignette, RInno apps will call your repository each time a user clicks their icon. If there have been any hotfixes or releases since installation, the app automatically updates, letting its user know through a windows progress bar, and then opens normally.

This feature requires:

1. A URL to the app’s repo, app_repo_url. This should be the full URL like, https://github.com/Dripdrop12/RInnoApp.
2. A release tag on GitHub, or a version on BitBucket. If you forget to create a release, your app will error when it calls get_remote_version and parsed_response’s subscript will be “out of bounds.”
3. An R package structure that can be installed via remotes::install_github or remotes::install_bitbucket. I recommend testing this before compiling your RInno .exe.

The release tag or version is compared with the package DESCRIPTION file, i.e. 0.0.0.9000, to determine if the app should call remotes::install_github or remotes::install_bitbucket respectively. So update the app’s version in both places (2 & 3 above) with each new version, otherwise the app will re-install every time its icon is clicked.

R Package Structure

To connect a shiny app to a remote repository, the app must be on Github or Bitbucket, and it must be in the inst/app directory of an R package. The easiest way to do this is by creating a new project in RStudio and selecting R Package. See Dean Attali’s Blog for a detailed tutorial on including shiny apps in an R package.

package/
	inst/app/
		ui.R
		server.R
	R
	…
	DESCRIPTION
	…

The package should be called app_name, and within the DESCRIPTION file, Package: app_name. Make sure your app can be installed as a package by typing ctrl+shift+B.

Bitbucket

On Bitbucket, enable issue tracking in the repo’s settings. This will add Versions to the Issues section and make it accessible via BitBucket’s API. Add 0.0.0.9000 to Versions and within the package’s DESCRIPTION file, Version: 0.0.0.9000.

Then create an RInno installer:

create_app(
  app_name     = "myapp",
  app_repo_url = "https://bitbucket.org/fi_consulting/myapp",
  pkgs         = c("magrittr", "httr", "shiny", "myapp"),
  auth_user    = "<read_only_username>",
  auth_pw      = "<password>")

compile_iss()

Or for custom installers, directly through create_config:

create_config(
  app_name     = "myapp", 
  R_version    = "3.3.2", 
  app_dir      = "app",
  pkgs         = c("magrittr", "httr", "shiny", "myapp"),
  app_repo_url = "https://bitbucket.org/fi_consulting/myapp",
  auth_user    = "<read_only_username>", 
  auth_pw      = "<password>")

# -------------------------------------------------- Many steps later
compile_iss()

Shiny apps compiled/installed this way will call the BitBucket API on start up, and re-install every time there is an update to the BitBucket repo’s version. For public repos, you do not need to provide auth_user and auth_pw.

GitHub

On GitHub, create a release for the app. The release(s) tab is located on the repo’s homepage next to branch(es) just before contributor(s). Add 0.0.0.9000 to the release tag and within the package’s DESCRIPTION file, Version: 0.0.0.9000. This will make the release tag accessible via GitHub’s API. For private repos, you will need to create an app token.

Then create an RInno installer:

create_app(
  app_name     = "myapp", 
  app_repo_url = "https://github.com/fi_consulting/myapp",
  pkgs         = c("magrittr", "httr", "shiny", "myapp"),
  auth_token   = "<app_token>")

compile_iss()

Or for custom installers, directly through create_config:

create_config(
  app_name     = "myapp", 
  R_version    = "3.3.2", 
  app_dir      = "app", 
  app_repo_url = "https://github.com/fi_consulting/myapp",
  pkgs         = c("magrittr", "httr", "shiny", "myapp"),
  auth_token   = "<app_token>")

# -------------------------------------------------- Many steps later
compile_iss()

Shiny apps compiled/installed this way will call the GitHub API on start up, and re-install every time there is an update to the GitHub repo’s most recent release tag. For public repos, you do not need to provide auth_token.

A Note on Versions

A released version number consists of three numbers, major.minor.patch. Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 is a good specification to follow because numeric_version will interpret it correctly:

numeric_version("0.1.0") == numeric_version("0.1")

## [1] TRUE

# First release!
numeric_version("0.0.1") > numeric_version("0.0.0.9000")

## [1] TRUE

This is important because RInno determines the local_version of the app via installed.packages(). If R cannot parse the version correctly, the continuous installation will be… nonstop. Users will love you.