Effective use of Shiny modules in application development

As a Shiny application grows in scale, organizing code into reusable and streamlined components becomes vital to manage future enhancements and avoid unnecessary duplication.

Effective use of Shiny modules in application development

January 24, 2019

As a Shiny application grows in scale, organizing code into reusable and streamlined components becomes vital to manage future enhancements and avoid unnecessary duplication. Shiny modules are customized R functions that are easily reused multiple times within an application by avoiding namespace collisions and assist with organizing the code base. Like R functions, modules can be simple utilities or elaborate pieces with multiple inputs and outputs. While the process of creating a module is uncomplicated, application developers can quickly encounter challenges including communication among modules, defining logical compositions, and avoiding hidden state modifications. In this talk, we will introduce practical principles and techniques developers can leverage to address these issues head-on such as documenting modules, passing parameters and return values effectively between modules, and how nesting modules enables dynamic user interfaces with minimal overhead.

View Materials

About the speaker

I have a broad background in statistics, computer science, and system administration which gives me a unique set of skills for using state-of-the-art technology and techniques to accomplish important and innovative data analyses.

In my professional role as a statistician, I support the design and analyses of clinical trials evaluating treatments for auto-immune disorders. I also perform statistical analyses of specialized biomarkers utilizing cutting-edge statistical software such as R and high-performance computing infrastructures.

I am also the creator, producer, and host of the R-Podcast. The R-Podcast is dedicated to helping those who are new to statistical computing develop their skills and confidence in using the free and open-source statistical computing package called R to get their data analyses done.