shinytemplate

An opinionated template for shiny dashboards (work in progress). The goal is to collect a bunch of things I commonly use when creating a dashboard (CSS, file structure, style, etc.), so I can skip all of this when a new project comes along. See a live demo of the app here.

Structure

I use ui.R, server.R, and global.R instead of a single app.R file to split the application into smaller pieces. All ui elements are prefixed with ui_, utility functions are stored in utils.R, all R code (excluding ui, server, and global) are stored in the R directory. The inst/extdata directory is just a habit I picked up from R packages, I store images and other external data here.

#> .
#> ├── R
#> │   ├── ui_dashboard_body.R
#> │   ├── ui_dashboard_header.R
#> │   ├── ui_dashboard_sidebar.R
#> │   ├── ui_tabs.R
#> │   └── utils.R
#> ├── README.Rmd
#> ├── README.md
#> ├── global.R
#> ├── inst
#> │   └── extdata
#> │       ├── example-app.png
#> │       ├── server-comments.png
#> │       ├── usage-options.png
#> │       └── utility-example.png
#> ├── server.R
#> ├── shinytemplate.Rproj
#> ├── ui.R
#> └── www
#>     ├── android-chrome-192x192.png
#>     ├── android-chrome-512x512.png
#>     ├── apple-touch-icon.png
#>     ├── custom.css
#>     ├── favicon-16x16.png
#>     ├── favicon-32x32.png
#>     └── favicon.ico

Comments

Server code is commented like so:

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#' Info Boxes
#' * Box 1: Some text describing box 1.
#' * Box 2: Some text describing box 2.
#' * Box 3: Some text describing box 3.
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where a specific component is labeled and individual pieces are described. This can make large server files a bit more manageable if you use code folding:

Utilities

I have a couple utility functions I always use to make a mini sidebar and add a favicon to the tab, these are:

• enable_mini_sidebar()
• mini_sidebar_title()
• enable_favicon()

Usage

This is a personal template but if you’d like to use it you have a couple options.

1. If you have a github account, you can simply fork the repo or hit the “Use this template” button.
2. Alternatively, you can clone or download the repository.