Upload Data to shiny

Upload .RData Files to shiny with fileInput()

The example allows you to upload .RData files. The approach with load and get allows you to assign the loaded data to a variable name of your choice. For the matter of the example being “standalone” I inserted the top section that stores two vectors to your disk in order to load and plot them later.

library(shiny)

# Define two datasets and store them to disk
x <- rnorm(100)
save(x, file = "x.RData")
rm(x)
y <- rnorm(100, mean = 2)
save(y, file = "y.RData")
rm(y)

# Define UI
ui <- shinyUI(fluidPage(
  titlePanel(".RData File Upload Test"),
  mainPanel(
    fileInput("file", label = ""),
    actionButton(inputId="plot","Plot"),
    plotOutput("hist"))
  )
)

# Define server logic
server <- shinyServer(function(input, output) {

  observeEvent(input$plot,{
    if ( is.null(input$file)) return(NULL)
    inFile <- input$file
    file <- inFile$datapath
    # load the file into new environment and get it from there
    e = new.env()
    name <- load(file, envir = e)
    data <- e[[name]]
    
    # Plot the data
    output$hist <- renderPlot({
      hist(data)
    })
  })
})

# Run the application 
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Uploading csv files to Shiny

It is also possible to have an user upload csv’s to your Shiny app. The code below shows a small example on how this can be achieved. It also includes a radioButton input so the user can interactively choose the separator to be used.

library(shiny)
library(DT)

# Define UI
ui <- shinyUI(fluidPage(
  
  fileInput('target_upload', 'Choose file to upload',
            accept = c(
              'text/csv',
              'text/comma-separated-values',
              '.csv'
            )),
  radioButtons("separator","Separator: ",choices = c(";",",",":"), selected=";",inline=TRUE),
  DT::dataTableOutput("sample_table")
)
)

# Define server logic
server <- shinyServer(function(input, output) {
  
  df_products_upload <- reactive({
    inFile <- input$target_upload
    if (is.null(inFile))
      return(NULL)
    df <- read.csv(inFile$datapath, header = TRUE,sep = input$separator)
    return(df)
  })
  
  output$sample_table<- DT::renderDataTable({
    df <- df_products_upload()
    DT::datatable(df)
  })
  
}
)

# Run the application 
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)