R Shiny - Access an App on my Local Machine

Question

I can not avoid windows at work. As such, I have a second machine that I use to do all of my heavy lifting and data analysis. In an ideal world, I could create a Shiny app and access it from another computer on my work's local network.

The solution that my IT folks proposed was using Remote Desktop, which COULD work, but I don't really want other users locking the machine.

Does anyone have insight as to how I can allow computers on my network to view my Shiny apps? I should have admin rights on my 2nd machine in case I need to tweak a few settings.

EDIT: While my ideal use case is Shiny, I would also want to access other R-based reports like Slidify presentations, compiled R Markdown reports, and perhaps, Gitbooks compiled to stand-alone websites.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It should be sufficient to set the host argument to 0.0.0.0 to allow it to broadcast beyond localhost, e.g.

runApp("app_name",host="0.0.0.0",port=3168)

Then you can visit http://machine2DNSname:3168 to see it.