User access to Connect hosted APIs and Apps

[mattc]

Hi everyone. I have a question regarding access of plumber APIs and Shiny Apps hosted with Rstudio Connect. When hosting an API on Connect can the url to the API be accessed by anyone or do they need to be a registered (licensed?) Connect user? Same question for Shiny apps. Can anyone visit the URL and utilize the program or do they first need to log into Connect as a user?

Thanks
Matt

[cole]

Great question! So this depends entirely on how you set up the access control for the content that you have published to Connect. Note that some of these options can even be removed at the server level, depending on configuration and preference.

Here, I show the Access pane for a Plumber API.

If I choose Anyone - no login required, than anyone who can access the Connect URL (i.e. taking into account firewalls / VPNs, etc.) will have access to the content. Otherwise login will be required, and permissions defined in a more granular fashion from there (i.e. if I specified only certain users could access). The same is true of Shiny applications (and all content hosted on Connect).

The one caveat is that Plumber APIs usually require programmatic access. If login is required, access is made possible through API keys, which all users on Connect can define for themselves:

The user guide might have more helpful information if you want to dig in further to these topics!

http://docs.rstudio.com/connect/user/

Specifically, on general publishing instructions and on API keys, if that is of interest: http://docs.rstudio.com/connect/user/api-keys.html