This example was shown as part of the talk Crosstalk: Shiny-like without Shiny at the Enterprise Applications of the R Language (EARL) conference in London, September 2018.
Self-service interactive tools have great power to support decisions by policy-makers. Shiny apps are a natural fit for this, but it’s not always easy to share them within the public sector. This is due to issues like a lack of server space, highly sensitive data and users who aren’t R-savvy.
We’ve approached this problem in the UK’s Department for Education by sharing interactive HTML widgets – embeddable JavaScript visualisation libraries – within RMarkdown outputs. Interactivity is, however, limited because selections in one widget don’t impact the data presented in another.
Joe Cheng’s Crosstalk package overcomes this with shared data objects that react to user inputs, altering the content of multiple widgets on the fly. I’ll explain how I used Crosstalk to develop a ‘pseudo-app’ for exploring schools data with the Leaflet (maps), Plotly (charts) and DT (tables) widgets inside the Flexdashboard framework and how I shared it easily with policy-making users as a static HTML file for exploration in the browser.
Note that this material is restricted to published data only and does not reflect or constitute official government policy.
R v3.4.4 and RStudio v1.1.442 were used to build this tool.
The packages used were:
The code for this tool is available from github.com/matt-dray/earl18-crosstalk. The presentation is available from github.com/matt-dray/earl18-presentation.
---
title: "Leaflet + Flexdashboard"
author: "Matt Dray"
output:
flexdashboard::flex_dashboard:
theme: paper
favicon: img/ios7-location-outline.png
source_code: embed
---
```{r setup, include=FALSE}
# prep workspace
sch <- readRDS("data/gias_sample.RDS")
library(dplyr) # tidy data manipulation
library(leaflet) # interative mapping
```
Column {data-width=250}
-------------------------------------
### About
#### How to
* click to grab and drag the map around
* zoom with the '+' and '--' buttons (top-left) or with your mouse's scroll wheel
* click a marker to reveal a popup with information about that school
#### Blurb
This example was shown as part of the talk Crosstalk: Shiny-like without Shiny at the [Enterprise Applications of the R Language (EARL) conference in London, September 2018](https://earlconf.com/2018/london/#matt-dray).
> Self-service interactive tools have great power to support decisions by policy-makers. Shiny apps are a natural fit for this, but it's not always easy to share them within the public sector. This is due to issues like a lack of server space, highly sensitive data and users who aren't R-savvy.
>
>We've approached this problem in the UK's Department for Education by sharing interactive HTML widgets – embeddable JavaScript visualisation libraries – within RMarkdown outputs. Interactivity is, however, limited because selections in one widget don’t impact the data presented in another.
>
>[Joe Cheng's Crosstalk package](http://rstudio.github.io/crosstalk/) overcomes this with shared data objects that react to user inputs, altering the content of multiple widgets on the fly. I'll explain how I used Crosstalk to develop a 'pseudo-app' for exploring schools data with the Leaflet (maps), Plotly (charts) and DT (tables) widgets inside the Flexdashboard framework and how I shared it easily with policy-making users as a static HTML file for exploration in the browser.
Note that this material is restricted to **published data only** and **does not reflect or constitute official government policy**.
#### Tools
[R v3.4.4](https://www.r-project.org/) and [RStudio v1.1.442](https://www.rstudio.com/) were used to build this tool.
The packages used were:
* [Flexdashboard](https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/flexdashboard/) to create a frame for the content
* [Leaflet](https://rstudio.github.io/leaflet/) for the interactive map
* [Ion icons](https://ionicons.com/) for icons
The code for this tool is available from [github.com/matt-dray/earl18-crosstalk](https://github.com/matt-dray/earl18-crosstalk). The presentation is available from [github.com/matt-dray/earl18-presentation](https://github.com/matt-dray/earl18-presentation).
Column {data-width=750}
-------------------------------------
### Interactive map
```{r map}
sch %>%
leaflet::leaflet() %>%
leaflet::addProviderTiles(providers$OpenStreetMap) %>%
leaflet::addAwesomeMarkers(
popup = ~paste0(
"", sch$sch_name, "
",
"",
"",
"URN ",
"", sch$sch_urn, " ",
" ",
"",
" ",
"Phase ",
"", sch$sch_phase, " ",
" ",
"",
" ",
"Type ",
"", sch$sch_type, " ",
" ",
"",
" ",
"Location ",
"", sch$geo_town, ", ", sch$geo_postcode, " ",
" ",
"",
" ",
"LA ",
"", sch$geo_la, " ",
" "
), # end popup()
icon = awesomeIcons(
library = "ion",
icon = ifelse(
test = sch$ofsted_rating == "1 Outstanding",
yes = "ion-android-star-outline",
no = "ion-android-radio-button-off"
),
iconColor = "white",
markerColor = ifelse(
test = sch$sch_phase == "Primary",
yes = "red",
no = "blue"
)
)
) %>% # end addAwesomeMarkers()
leaflet::addMeasure()
```