R- Shiny webserver on a local server

Question

I have a windows machine with IIS and I can see the IIS welcome page on http://myname/. I have recently started using Shiny through its own server and I can see shiny apps on http://127.0.0.1:port

Now my question is how can I allow others to see my shiny apps on http://myname:port ? (since 127.0.0.1 is not accessible from other computers). Is this possible with the free version of shiny?

Answer 1

You should make following:

1. Find your IP ("ipconfig" from cmd prompt in Windows)

2. Set Shiny to start from port "XXXX" and your IP (instead of 127.0.0.1)

   For example:

   options(shiny.port = 7775)

   options(shiny.host = "192.0.0.45")

3. Run your App

   runApp(app)

Make sure the port is opened in your firewall.

To be a bit more precise, this is how your file startApp.R might look like:

library(shiny) options(shiny.host = '0.0.0.0') options(shiny.port = 8888) runApp('shinyapp') 

This is an example of how you would set the options if Shiny was running behind nginx with tcp.

Answer 2

The comments have already said this, but in the interest of providing an answer:

You can use shiny server (free and pro) to host apps on your own server. I believe this will allow you to set it up on http://myname/, however shiny server should be running in a linux environment as listed by @pops.

https://www.rstudio.com/products/shiny/shiny-server/

Or

you can use shiny.io to host them for you, with premium versions having the ability to set your own domain

https://www.shinyapps.io/