Shiny Contest Submission: ShinyWYSIWYG: a Shiny What You See Is What You Get editor

I can't put links ("Sorry, new users can only put 2 links in a post.") :man_shrugging:
shinyapps: jcrodriguez.shinyapps.io/shinyWYSIWYG/
Rstudio cloud: rstudio.cloud/project/179139
GitHub: jcrodriguez1989/shinyWYSIWYG

This app was already presented at the LatinR 2018 conference: 47jaiio.sadio.org.ar/sites/default/files/LatinR_24.pdf

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Abstract
For any computer application, having a graphical user interface (GUI) potentially increases its usability and scope. In the case of the R language, one of the most used alternatives is the Shiny library. Shiny is an R package that facilitates the creation of interactive web applications directly from R. However, using Shiny requires a certain level of knowledge of R programming. Looking at CRAN's Task Views, it is easy to note that the R community brings together a variety of specialists in various fields such as biologists, agronomists, economists, among others. It is therefore crucial that R development tools maximize the level of programmatic simplicity to ease the start of the learning ramp. In order to further facilitate the process of developing a user-friendly GUI, and tackling this learning gap, here we present the ShinyWYSIWYG application.

ShinyWYSIWYG is a visual editor that allows the user, using the drag and drop technique, inserting the various fields that Shiny provides as input and output, by selecting the desired size and position for each field.

Once the user interface is generated, ShinyWYSIWYG also eases the development of the server logic. For each event that the user wishes to generate, the input field that triggers the action must be specified, the code to be executed, the input variables that it will use, and if desired, which is the output field where the results will be rendered. ShinyWYSIWYG also allows using global variables and adding code that must be executed before running the server (application's global code).

Once the GUI design is complete, ShinyWYSIWYG provides the complete R code that generates it. Then the user should only have to copy and paste the code and run its Shiny application. ShinyWYSIWYG also allows loading previously saved projects.

ShinyWYSIWYG is entirely developed in R using the Shiny, ggplot2, and shinyjs libraries. It works independently of R and Shiny versions. It is freely available at GitHub - jcrodriguez1989/shinyWYSIWYG: ShinyApp: Shiny What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, where is also an example to recreate, by ShinyWYSIWYG, the Shiny "01_hello'' application.

6 Likes

This is great - thanks for creating and sharing

Haha thanks.
It was fun developing it. And it was useful for teaching Shiny to my colleagues.

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