(Re)-deploying Shiny Apps

Deploying from an appStructure

We can deploy a shiny app directly from an appStructure object. We can do this by calling deployAppStructure()

deployAppStructure(
  appStructure = appStructure,
  appDir = tempdir())

deployAppStructure() is basically a wrapper around rsconnect::deployApp(). deployAppStructure() has the dot-dot-dot parameter (...) that will pass any other parameters you specify to rsconnect::deployApp(). This allows you to pass things like an appId or account arguments.

Re-deployment

Lets say we would like to restructure our shiny app based on some feedback we have gotten. We can download a tar.gz file from posit:

settings -> Current Bundle -> View all bundles -> Download

You can select the bundle to download, but usually you want the one labeled as “active”.

This file is structured as followed:

bundle-xxxx.tar.gz
  |- .
    |- <...>
    |- appStructure.qs

There is no need to unpack the tar.gz-file, loadFromDisk() will extract the appStructure object for us:

appStructure <- loadAppStructure(
  filePath = "./bundle-xxxx.tar.gz",
  appStructureFileName = "appStructure.qs"
)

Now we have an identical copy of the appStructure that we made before. We can alter the appStructure as we like:

# Remove `base`
appStructure$base <- NULL

# Re-order alphabetically:
appStructure <- appStructure[sort(names(appStructure))]

With our updates made, we can re-deploy our app, by using the deployAppStructure() function again, note that we pass the appId argument, which is found in the info tab on posit:

deployAppStructure(
  appStructure = appStructure,
  appDir = tempdir(),
  appId = 123
)