Create one shiny app with two users that log in to different versions of the app

Question

I have the shiny app below in which let's say that we want to log in 2 different users. The "shiny" and the "shinymanager" as you can see from the credentials I gave. I want each one to log in to a different version of the app. One should see the selectInput and the table that are displayed now and the other the commented out ones. Maybe there is a different way than shinymanager package.

# define some credentials
credentials <- data.frame(
  user = c("shiny", "shinymanager"), # mandatory
  password = c("azerty", "12345"), # mandatory
  start = c("2019-04-15"), # optinal (all others)
  expire = c(NA, "2019-12-31"),
  admin = c(FALSE, TRUE),
  comment = "Simple and secure authentification mechanism 
  for single ‘Shiny’ applications.",
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

library(shiny)
library(shinymanager)

ui <- fluidPage(
  tags$h2("My secure application"),
  selectInput("variable", "Variable:",
              c("Cylinders" = "cyl",
                "Transmission" = "am",
                "Gears" = "gear")),
  tableOutput("data")
  #selectInput("variable2", "Variable:",
   #           c("Cylinders" = "cyl"
    #            )),
  #tableOutput("data2")
)

# Wrap your UI with secure_app
ui <- secure_app(ui)


server <- function(input, output, session) {
  
  # call the server part
  # check_credentials returns a function to authenticate users
  res_auth <- secure_server(
    check_credentials = check_credentials(credentials)
  )
  output$data <- renderTable({
    mtcars[, c("mpg", input$variable), drop = FALSE]
  }, rownames = TRUE)
  #output$data2 <- renderTable({
   # mtcars[, c("mpg", input$variable2), drop = FALSE]
  #}, rownames = TRUE)
  
  
  # your classic server logic
  
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

Hi firmo23. I just wanted to let you know that it's considered a better practice to do the authentication outside of Shiny. In the book Mastering Shiny, Hadley Wickham writes: `If you need to authenticate users, i.e. identify them through a user name and password, never attempt to roll a solution yourself. There are just too many things that might go wrong.` In the [Security chapter of the book](https://mastering-shiny.org/scaling-security.html) he lists out some sources where you could find alternative solutions, and some pitfalls you want to be aware of. — jpiversen, Dec 26 '21 at 21:09

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 26 '21 at 22:05

One possible way of doing this with shinymanager is as below. Another self build solution can be found here with more explanation on github.

The quote regarding self-build authentication in shiny in the comments is of course correct: using an approach outside of shiny is the better way.

# define some credentials
credentials <- data.frame(
  user = c("shiny", "shinymanager"), # mandatory
  password = c("azerty", "12345"), # mandatory
  start = c("2019-04-15"), # optinal (all others)
  expire = c(NA, NA),
  admin = c(FALSE, TRUE),
  comment = "Simple and secure authentification mechanism
  for single ‘Shiny’ applications.",
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

library(shiny)
library(shinymanager)

ui <- fluidPage(
  tags$h2("My secure application"),
  uiOutput("myinput"),
  tableOutput("data")
)

# Wrap your UI with secure_app
ui <- secure_app(ui)


server <- function(input, output, session) {
  
  # call the server part
  # check_credentials returns a function to authenticate users
  res_auth <- secure_server(
    check_credentials = check_credentials(credentials)
  )

  output$myinput <- renderUI({

    if (reactiveValuesToList(res_auth)$user == "shiny") {
    # if (TRUE) {
      mychoices <- c("Cylinders" = "cyl",
                     "Transmission" = "am",
                     "Gears" = "gear")
    } else {
      mychoices <- c("Sepal Length" = "Sepal.Length",
                     "Sepal Width" = "Sepal.Width",
                     "Petal Length" = "Petal.Length",
                     "Petal Width" = "Petal.Width")
    }

    selectInput("variable",
                "Variable:",
                choices = mychoices)
  })
  
  output$data <- renderTable({
    
    expr = if (reactiveValuesToList(res_auth)$user == "shiny") {
      mtcars[, c("mpg", input$variable), drop = FALSE]
    } else {
      iris[, c("Species", input$variable), drop = FALSE]
    }
    })

}

shinyApp(ui, server)

I made it a little more complex https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70497147/in-an-app-with-2-different-versions-of-shiny-widget-for-each-user-speicic-user-m — firmo23, Dec 27 '21 at 15:05

Create one shiny app with two users that log in to different versions of the app

1 Answers1