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Integrating Shiny Apps for Reporting with MHIRA

MHIRA supports interactive reporting through Shiny apps. Here's how to set up and manage Shiny apps within your MHIRA environment.

Deploying Shiny Apps​

Setting the Shiny Apps Directory​

To host your Shiny apps, place them in the directory indicated by the SHINY_APPS_PATH variable in your .env file. By default, this is set to:

~/shiny_apps

The tilde (~) symbol represents your user's home directory. For example, if your username is john, the path ~/shiny_apps would translate to /home/john/shiny_apps on most Unix-based systems.

Cloning a Shiny App Repository​

You can easily clone existing Shiny apps into this directory. For example, to clone the MHIRA data export app, navigate to your Shiny apps directory and run:

git clone https://github.com/mhira-project/data-export.git

This will create a data-export folder within your ~/shiny_apps directory containing all the files from the repository.

Accessing Your Shiny App​

After deployment, your Shiny app can be accessed via the following URL format:

https://yourMHIRAdomain/shiny/nameOFyourSHINYapp

Dashboard Integration​

To link your Shiny app within the MHIRA dashboard, consult the admin reports guide or refer to the following section:

Adding a button in MHIRA to connect to your app​

Please consult this section.

R Package Management​

If your Shiny apps require additional R packages, append them to the Dockerfile used for building the Shiny server container or refer to the following section:

Adding R packages to the shiny server​

Packages can be added via the shiny server docker file with the install2.R command.

RUN install2.r --error \
    --deps FALSE \
    data.table \
    RColorBrewer \
    httr \
    shinydashboard \
    tidyjson \
    jsonlite \
    htmlwidgets \
    DT \
    crosstalk

Access to GraphQL API​

For accessing the GraphQL API from within shiny server and RStudio server, please refer to the section about the GraphQL API.

Troubleshooting​

For troubleshooting Shiny app issues, there are a few strategies you can use:

Using Docker Logs​

If you want to see output from the shiny app, you can attach the container to your terminal using Docker logs. For instructions on how to use Docker logs, you can refer to the official documentation here.

RStudio Container​

Else, we recommend to run the app via the RStudio container and use debugging and breakpoints. Detailed logs and debugging tools are available in RStudio to help diagnose and fix problems.

This streamlined process ensures your Shiny apps are effectively incorporated into MHIRA's reporting capabilities.