About the run_app() function

When launching the app, you might have noticed that the dev/run_dev.R function calls run_app(), which has the following structure:

run_app <- function(...) {
  with_golem_options(
    app = shinyApp(
      ui = app_ui,
      server = app_server
    ),
    golem_opts = list(...)
  )
}

This function might looks a little bit weird, but there’s a long story behind it, and you can read more about it there.

But long story short, this combination of with_golem_options & golem_opts = list(...) allows you to pass argument to the function to be used inside the application, from UI or from server side, which you can get with get_golem_options().

run_app(this = "that")
# And in the app
this <- get_golem_options("this")

The idea is to provide more flexibility for deployment on each platform you want to run your app on.

Deploying Apps with {golem}

The dev/03_deploy.R file contains function for deploying on various platforms.

RStudio Products

Docker

without using {renv}

# If you want to deploy via a generic Dockerfile
golem::add_dockerfile()

# If you want to deploy to ShinyProxy
golem::add_dockerfile_shinyproxy()

# If you want to deploy to Heroku
golem::add_dockerfile_heroku()

using {renv}

CASE 1 : you didn’t use renv during developpment process

this functions will create a “deploy” folder containing :

deploy/
+-- Dockerfile
+-- Dockerfile_base
+-- yourgolem_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz
+-- README
\-- renv.lock.prod

then follow the README file

# If you want to deploy via a generic Dockerfile
golem::add_dockerfile_with_renv(output_dir = "deploy")

# If you want to deploy to ShinyProxy
golem::add_dockerfile_with_renv_shinyproxy(output_dir = "deploy")

If you would like to use {renv} during developpement, you can init a renv.lock file with

attachment::create_renv_for_dev(dev_pkg = c(
  "renv",
  "devtools",
  "roxygen2",
  "usethis",
  "pkgload",
  "testthat",
  "remotes",
  "covr",
  "attachment",
  "pak",
  "dockerfiler",
  "golem"
))

an activate {renv} with

renv::activate()

CASE 2 : you already have a renv.lock file for your project


# If you want to deploy via a generic Dockerfile
golem::add_dockerfile_with_renv(output_dir = "deploy", lockfile = "renv.lock")

# If you want to deploy to ShinyProxy
golem::add_dockerfile_with_renv_shinyproxy(output_dir = "deploy", lockfile = "renv.lock")

this functions will create a “deploy” folder containing :

deploy/
+-- Dockerfile
+-- Dockerfile_base
+-- yourgolem_0.0.0.9000.tar.gz
+-- README
\-- renv.lock.prod

then follow the README file