Creating a Shiny app with real time data

Question

I am trying to create a Shiny app to display data that is collected real time. For this I am using invalidateLater(5000, session) to periodically update the data in R.

Here is the outline of my server.R file:

library(shiny)
library(magrittr)

# Function to get new observations
get_new_data <- function(){
    data <- rnorm(5) %>% rbind %>% data.frame
    return(data)
}

# Initialize my_data
my_data <- get_new_data()

# Function to update my_data
update_data <- function(){
    my_data <- rbind(get_new_data(), my_data)
}

shinyServer(function(input, output, session){

  # Plot the 30 most recent values
  output$first_column <- renderPlot({
    invalidateLater(5000, session)
    update_data()
    plot(X1 ~ 1, data=my_data[1:30,], ylim=c(-3, 3), las=1)
  })

})

The problem I am having is that I want to show the N most recent values but can't figure out how to keep the old values. So instead of plotting the most recent 30 values I get a plot of 1 value.

Does anyone know the correct way to setup a Shiny app to update with new data while keeping the old?

Answer 1

This works for me:

library(shiny)
library(magrittr)

ui <- shinyServer(fluidPage(
  plotOutput("first_column")
))

server <- shinyServer(function(input, output, session){
  # Function to get new observations
  get_new_data <- function(){
    data <- rnorm(5) %>% rbind %>% data.frame
    return(data)
  }

  # Initialize my_data
  my_data <<- get_new_data()

  # Function to update my_data
  update_data <- function(){
    my_data <<- rbind(get_new_data(), my_data)
  }

  # Plot the 30 most recent values
  output$first_column <- renderPlot({
    print("Render")
    invalidateLater(1000, session)
    update_data()
    print(my_data)
    plot(X1 ~ 1, data=my_data[1:30,], ylim=c(-3, 3), las=1, type="l")
  })
})

shinyApp(ui=ui,server=server)

The problem was just that my_data was updated in the wrong scope. Just remember to not keep on rbinding forever.