JamesHWade / golemWebR

A test repository to deploy golem powered Shiny app on Netlify with webR

golemWebR

This repositories shows a {golem} powered app boilerplate with the necessary elements to be hosted on Netlify, without any Shiny server.

The app is deployed here at https://golem-webr.rinterface.com/.

I leveraged the {golem4Shiny} package to create the corresponding infrastructure. What does {golem4Shiny}? Essentially, it:

• Copies relevant part of the {golem} app (R, inst) into the folder of your choice, default being ./webR.
• Tweaks some of the {golem} copied files. Importantly, this does not impact the main app files.
• Adds a slightly modified version of the JS technology to run webR and adapt with Shiny (originally provided by George Stagg: https://github.com/georgestagg/shiny-standalone-webr-demo).
• Adds a makefile to run the app locally and test.

Run it locally

cd to ./webr and run make to serve the app locally. Browse to localhost:8080 to view the app.

Deploy on Netlify

Link your repo to Netlify and deploy the ./webr folder only.

Notes

Don't forget that there are few tweaks necessary to make it possible to work:

• We can't use pkgload::load_all() as in the usual {golem} app.R file because local packages can't be installed on webR (we would need a compiler for wasm). So we rely on the {shiny} autoload feature since 1.5.0, to load all files from the R folder (except the autoload one, which is not uploaded to the webR VFS).
• {golem} app_sys() also needs some tweaks since we can't do system.file(..., package = "<local_package_name>), the package being impossible to install locally.
• golem::favicon() does not seem to work, likely because of an issue between {fs} and webR so we commented it out.