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brochure

R build status Lifecycle: experimental R-CMD-check

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, DO NOT USE

The goal of {brochure} is to provide a mechanism for creating natively multi-page {shiny} applications, i.e that can serve content on multiple endpoints.

Disclaimer: the way you will build app with {brochure} is different from the way you usually build {shiny} apps, as we no longer operate under the single page app paradigm. Please read the “Design Pattern” of this README for more info.

Installation

You can install the dev version of {brochure} with:

remotes::install_github("ColinFay/brochure")
library(brochure)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'brochure'
#> The following object is masked from 'package:utils':
#> 
#>     page
library(shiny)

About

You’re reading the doc about version : 0.0.0.9024

This README has been compiled on the

Sys.time()
#> [1] "2023-03-27 14:00:48 CEST"

Here are the test & coverage results :

devtools::check(quiet = TRUE)
#> ℹ Loading brochure
#> ── R CMD check results ──────────────────────────────── brochure 0.0.0.9024 ────
#> Duration: 12.1s
#> 
#> 0 errors ✔ | 0 warnings ✔ | 0 notes ✔
covr::package_coverage()
#> brochure Coverage: 42.07%
#> R/brochure-fns.R: 0.00%
#> R/brochureApp.R: 0.00%
#> R/req_res_handlers.R: 0.00%
#> R/server-side.R: 0.00%
#> R/utils_page.R: 0.00%
#> R/utils_req.R: 0.00%
#> R/cookie.R: 93.91%
#> R/golem_hook.R: 100.00%
#> R/new_page.R: 100.00%
#> R/utils.R: 100.00%

Minimal {brochure} App

page()

A brochureApp is a series of pages that are defined by an href (the path/endpoint where the page is available), a {shiny} UI and a server function. This is conceptually important: each page has its own shiny session, its own UI, and its own server.

Note that the server is optional if you want to display a static page.

brochureApp(
  # First page
  page(
    href = "/",
    ui = fluidPage(
      h1("This is my first page"),
      plotOutput("plot")
    ),
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      output$plot <- renderPlot({
        plot(iris)
      })
    }
  ),
  # Second page, without any server-side function
  page(
    href = "/page2",
    ui = fluidPage(
      h1("This is my second page"),
      tags$p("There is no server function in this one")
    )
  )
)

You can now navigate to /, and to /page2 inside your browser.

redirect()

Redirections can be used to redirect from one endpoint to the other:

brochureApp(
  page(
    href = "/",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("This is my first page")
    )
  ),
  redirect(
    from = "/nothere",
    to = "/"
  )
)

You can now navigate to /nothere, you’ll be redirected to /

A more elaborate example:

# Creating a navlink
nav_links <- tags$ul(
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/", "home"),
  ),
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/page2", "page2"),
  ),
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/contact", "contact"),
  )
)

page_1 <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/",
    ui = function(request) {
      tagList(
        h1("This is my first page"),
        nav_links,
        plotOutput("plot")
      )
    },
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      output$plot <- renderPlot({
        plot(mtcars)
      })
    }
  )
}

page_2 <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/page2",
    ui = function(request) {
      tagList(
        h1("This is my second page"),
        nav_links,
        plotOutput("plot")
      )
    },
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      output$plot <- renderPlot({
        plot(mtcars)
      })
    }
  )
}

page_contact <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/contact",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("Contact us"),
      nav_links,
      tags$ul(
        tags$li("Here"),
        tags$li("There")
      )
    )
  )
}

brochureApp(
  # Pages
  page_1(),
  page_2(),
  page_contact(),
  # Redirections
  redirect(
    from = "/page3",
    to = "/page2"
  ),
  redirect(
    from = "/page4",
    to = "/"
  )
)

IMPORTANT NOTE all elements which are not of class "brochure_*" (brochure_page and brochure_redirect) will be injected as is in the page. In other word, if you use a function that return a string, the string will be added as is to the pages. For example, this will inject a "x" on each page. This is probably NOT what you want to do, but can be the source of some bugs you’ll have with your app.

brochureApp(
  "x",
  page(
    href = "/"
  )
)

req_handlers & res_handlers

Sorry what?

Each page, and the global app, have a req_handlers and res_handlers parameters, that can take a list of functions.

An *_handler is a function that takes as parameter(s):

  • For req_handlers, req, which is the request object (see below for when these objects are created). For example function(req){ print(req$PATH_INFO); return(req)}.

  • For res_handlers, res, the response object, & req. For example function(res, req){ print(res$content); return(res)}.

req_handlers must return req & res_handlers must return res. Both can be potentially modified.

They can be used to register log, or to modify the objects, or any kind of things you can think of. If you are familiar with express.js, you can think of req_handlers as what express calls “middleware”. These functions are run when R is building the HTTP response to send to the browser (i.e, no server code has been run yet), following this process:

  1. R receives a GET request from the browser, creating a request object, called req
  2. The req_handlers are run using this req object
  3. R creates an httpResponse, using this req and how you defined the UI
  4. The res_handlers are run on this httpResponse (first app level res_handlers, then page level res_handlers)
  5. The httpResponse is sent back to the browser

Note that if any req_handlers returns an httpResponse object, it will be returned to the browser immediately, without any further computation. This early httpResponse will not be passed to the res_handlers of the app or the page. This process can for example be used to send custom httpResponse, as shown below with the healthcheck endpoint.

You can use formulas inside your handlers. .x and ..1 will be req for req_handlers, .x and ..1 will be res & .y and ..2 will be req for res_handlers.

Design pattern side-note: you’d probably want to define the handlers outside of the app, for better code organization (as with log_where below).

Example: Logging with req_handlers(), and building a healthcheck point

In this app, we’ll log to the console every page and the time it is called, using the log_where() function.

log_where <- function(req) {
  cli::cat_rule(
    sprintf(
      "%s - %s",
      Sys.time(),
      req$PATH_INFO
    )
  )
  req
}

We’ll also build an healthcheck endpoint that simply returns a httpResponse with the 200 HTTP code.

# Reusing the pages from before
brochureApp(
  req_handlers = list(
    log_where
  ),
  # Pages
  page_1(),
  page_2(),
  page_contact(),
  page(
    href = "/healthcheck",
    # As this is a pure backend exchange,
    # We don't need a UI
    ui = tagList(),
    # As this req_handler returns an httpResponse,
    # This response will be returned directly to the browser,
    # without passing through the usual shiny http dance
    req_handlers = list(
      # If you have shiny < 1.6.0, you'll need to
      # do shiny:::httpResponse (triple `:`)
      # as it is not exported until 1.6.0.
      # Otherwise, see ?shiny::httpResponse
      ~ shiny::httpResponse(200, content = "OK")
    )
  )
)

If you navigate to each page, you’ll see this in the console:

Listening on http://127.0.0.1:4879
── 2021-02-17 21:52:16 - / ──────────────────────────────
── 2021-02-17 21:52:17 - /page2 ─────────────────────────
── 2021-02-17 21:52:19 - /contact ───────────────────────

If you go to another R session, you can check that you’ve got a 200 on healthcheck

> httr::GET("http://127.0.0.1:4879/healthcheck")
Response [http://127.0.0.1:4879/healthcheck]
  Date: 2021-02-17 21:55
  Status: 200
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
  Size: 2 B

Handling cookies using res_handlers

res_handlers can be used to set cookies, by adding a Set-Cookie header, using both the set_cookie() and remove_cookie() functions.

Note that you can get them from the server with get_cookies(), and parse the cookie string using parse_cookie_string.

parse_cookie_string("a=12;session=blabla")
#>        a  session 
#>     "12" "blabla"

In the example, we’ll also use brochure::server_redirect("/") to redirect the user after login.

# Creating a navlink
nav_links <- tags$ul(
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/", "home"),
  ),
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/login", "login"),
  ),
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/logout", "logout"),
  )
)

home <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("This is my first page"),
      tags$p("It will contain BROCHURECOOKIE depending on the last page you've visited (/login or /logout)"),
      verbatimTextOutput("cookie"),
      nav_links
    ),
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      output$cookie <- renderPrint({
        parse_cookie_string(
          get_cookies()
        )
      })
    }
  )
}

login <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/login",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("You've just logged!"),
      verbatimTextOutput("cookie"),
      actionButton("redirect", "Redirect to the home page"),
      nav_links
    ),
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      output$cookie <- renderPrint({
        parse_cookie_string(
          get_cookies()
        )
      })
      observeEvent(input$redirect, {
        # Using brochure to redirect to another page
        server_redirect("/")
      })
    },
    res_handlers = list(
      # We'll add a cookie here
      ~ set_cookie(.x, "BROCHURECOOKIE", 12)
      # If you had to do it yourself
      # function(res, req){
      #   res$headers$`Set-Cookie` <- "BROCHURECOOKIE=12; HttpOnly;"
      #   res
      # }
    )
  )
}

logout <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/logout",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("You've logged out"),
      nav_links,
      verbatimTextOutput("cookie")
    ),
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      output$cookie <- renderPrint({
        parse_cookie_string(
          get_cookies()
        )
      })
    },
    res_handlers = list(
      # We'll remove the cookie here
      ~ remove_cookie(.x, "BROCHURECOOKIE")
      # If you had to do it yourself
      # function(res, req){
      #   res$headers$`Set-Cookie` <- "BROCHURECOOKIE=''; Max-Age = 0;"
      #   res
      # }
    )
  )
}

brochureApp(
  # Pages
  home(),
  login(),
  logout()
)

Design pattern

Note that every time you open a new page, a new shiny session is launched. This is different from what you usually do when you are building a {shiny} app that works as a single page application. This is no longer the case in {brochure}.

What that means is that there is no data persistence in R when navigating from one page to the other. That might seem like a downside, but I believe that it will actually be for the best: it will make developers think more carefully about the data flow of their application.

That being said, how do we keep track of a user though pages, so that if they do something in a page, it’s reflected on another?

To do that, you’d need to add a form of session identifier, like a cookie: this can for example be done using the {glouton} package if you want to manage it with JS. You can also use the cookie example from before.

You’ll also need a form of backend storage (here in the example, we use {cachem}, but you can also use an external DB like SQLite or MongoDB).

library(glouton)
# Creating a storage system
cache_system <- cachem::cache_disk(tempdir())

nav_links <- tags$ul(
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/", "home"),
  ),
  tags$li(
    tags$a(href = "/page2", "page2"),
  )
)

cookie_set <- function() {
  r <- reactiveValues()

  observeEvent(
    TRUE,
    {
      # Fetch the cookies using {glouton}
      r$cook <- fetch_cookies()

      # If there is no stored cookie for {brochure}, we generate it
      if (is.null(r$cook$brochure_cookie)) {
        # Generate a random id
        session_id <- digest::sha1(paste(Sys.time(), sample(letters, 16)))
        # Add this id as a cookie
        add_cookie("brochure_cookie", session_id)
        # Store in in the reactiveValues list
        r$cook$brochure_cookie <- session_id
      }
      # For debugging purpose
      print(r$cook$brochure_cookie)
    },
    once = TRUE
  )
  return(r)
}

page_1 <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("This is my first page"),
      nav_links,
      # The text enter on page 1 will be available on page 2, using
      # a session cookie and a storage system
      textInput("textenter", "Enter a text"),
      actionButton("save", "Save my text and go to page2")
    ),
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      r <- cookie_set()
      observeEvent(input$save, {
        # Use the session id to save on the cache system
        cache_system$set(
          paste0(
            r$cook$brochure_cookie,
            "text"
          ),
          input$textenter
        )
        server_redirect("/page2")
      })
    }
  )
}

page_2 <- function() {
  page(
    href = "/page2",
    ui = tagList(
      h1("This is my second page"),
      nav_links,
      # The text enter on page 1 will be available here, reading
      # the storage system
      verbatimTextOutput("textdisplay")
    ),
    server = function(input, output, session) {
      r <- cookie_set()
      output$textdisplay <- renderPrint({
        # Getting the content value based on the session cookie
        cache_system$get(
          paste0(
            r$cook$brochure_cookie,
            "text"
          )
        )
      })
    }
  )
}

brochureApp(
  # Setting {glouton} globally
  use_glouton(),
  # Pages
  page_1(),
  page_2()
  # Redirections
)

With {golem}

Fresh {golem} App

You can set up a {brochure} based app with {golem} using the brochure::golem_hook() function.

golem::create_golem("mapmyrace", project_hook = brochure::golem_hook)

You can also use the module_template function to create a {brochure} module :

golem::add_module(name = "pouet", module_template = brochure::new_page)

Adapt old app

To adapt your {golem} based application to {brochure}, here are the two steps to follow:

  • Remove the app_server.R file, and the top of app_ui => You’ll still need golem_add_external_resources().

  • Build the pages inside separate R scripts, following the example from this README.

.
├── DESCRIPTION
├── NAMESPACE
├── R
│   ├── app_config.R
│   ├── home.R ### YOUR PAGE
│   ├── login.R ### YOUR PAGE
│   ├── logout.R ### YOUR PAGE
│   └── run_app.R ### YOUR PAGE
├── dev
│   ├── 01_start.R
│   ├── 02_dev.R
│   ├── 03_deploy.R
│   └── run_dev.R
├── inst
│   ├── app
│   │   └── www
│   │       ├── favicon.ico
│   └── golem-config.yml
├── man
│   └── run_app.Rd
  • Replace shinyApp with brochureApp in run_app(), add the external resources, then your pages.
run_app <- function(
  onStart = NULL,
  options = list(),
  enableBookmarking = NULL,
  ...
) {
  with_golem_options(
    app = brochureApp(
      # Putting the resources here
      golem_add_external_resources(),
      home(),
      login(),
      logout(),
      onStart = onStart,
      options = options,
      enableBookmarking = enableBookmarking
    ),
    golem_opts = list(...)
  )
}

Previous work

Other packages that implements features that are closed to what {brochure} does:

As far as I can tell, these packages doesn’t serve the same goal as what {brochure} does, as they both still serve Single Page Applications.