Create a VizModules Figure Builder Application

Build the multi-panel Figure Builder Shiny application as a returnable object. The app lets users add any VizModules plot module to a free-form A4 canvas, drag and resize each plot, filter each plot's data independently, label panels automatically, and export the whole figure as a single editable SVG (or bundle every plot's source data, HTML plot, and statistics into one .zip).

Usage

figureBuilderApp(
  data_list = NULL,
  module_registry = NULL,
  title = "VizModules Figure Builder",
  return_components = FALSE
)

Arguments

data_list

An optional named list of data frames that seed the dataset registry. If NULL (the default), the bundled example datasets (plus a sales_by_product summary suited to the pie plot) are used. At least one element is required and every element must be a data frame.

module_registry

An optional named list describing the plot modules to offer. If NULL (the default), all bundled VizModules modules are offered. Each entry is itself a list with components: label (character, shown in the picker), dataset (character, the dataset name its defaults were written for), inputs_ui, output_ui, and server_fn (the module's three functions), and defaults (a named list of input defaults applied only when dataset is the chosen dataset).

title

A character string used as the page title and header (default: "VizModules Figure Builder").

return_components

Logical. When FALSE (the default) a shiny::shinyApp() object is returned. When TRUE a named list with ui and server elements is returned instead, which is convenient for deployment scripts that need an explicit shinyApp(ui, server) call.

Value

Either a shiny::shinyApp() object, or (when return_components = TRUE) a list with elements ui and server.

Details

Datasets are supplied via data_list and seed the "Add Plot" dialog; users can also upload additional datasets (CSV, TSV, TXT, or RDS) at runtime. The set of available plot modules is controlled by module_registry, so the app can be extended with custom wrapper modules without editing the package.

This is the recommended way to launch a standalone Figure Builder. Internally it is a thin wrapper around the figureBuilderUI() / figureBuilderServer() Shiny module, so the same builder can be embedded inside a larger app (and instantiated more than once) by calling those two functions directly. The bundled app at system.file("apps/figure-builder", package = "VizModules") is itself a thin wrapper around this function.

See also

figureBuilderUI(), figureBuilderServer()

Author

Jared Andrews

Examples

library(VizModules)

# Launch with the bundled example datasets and all modules:
app <- figureBuilderApp()
if (interactive()) runApp(app)

# Launch with your own datasets:
app2 <- figureBuilderApp(data_list = list("iris" = iris, "mtcars" = mtcars))
if (interactive()) runApp(app2)

# Return the UI and server separately (e.g. for a deployment app.R):
parts <- figureBuilderApp(return_components = TRUE)
if (interactive()) shinyApp(parts$ui, parts$server)