CRUD-Capable Mobile Apps with R and shinyMobile: a Case Study in Rapid Prototyping

Abstract

"Harden" is a Progressive Web Application (PWA) for Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) developed mostly in R, which runs on all platforms with an internet connection, including iOS and Android. It leverages the shinyMobile package for creating a reactive mobile user interface (UI), PostgreSQL for the database backend, and Google Cloud Run for scalable hosting in the cloud, with serverless execution. Using this technology stack, it was possible to rapidly prototype a fully CRUD-capable (Create, Read, Update, Delete) mobile app, with persistent user data across sessions, interactive graphs, and real-time statistical calculation. This framework is compared with current alternative frameworks for creating data science apps; it is argued that the shinyMobile package provides one of the most efficient methods for rapid prototyping and creation of statistical mobile apps that require advanced graphing capabilities. This paper outlines the methodology used to create the Harden application, and discusses the advantages and limitations of the shinyMobile approach to app development. It is hoped that this information will encourage other programmers versed in R to consider developing mobile apps with this framework.