Containerizing an R Application: Prerequisites, Setup, and Running

--- title: Containerize a R application linkTitle: Containerize your app weight: 10 keywords: R, containerize, initialize description: Learn how to containerize a R application. aliases: - /language/R/build-images/ - /language/R/run-containers/ - /language/r/containerize/ - /guides/language/r/containerize/ --- ## Prerequisites - You have a [git client](https://git-scm.com/downloads). The examples in this section use a command-line based git client, but you can use any client. ## Overview This section walks you through containerizing and running a R application. ## Get the sample application The sample application uses the popular [Shiny](https://shiny.posit.co/) framework. Clone the sample application to use with this guide. Open a terminal, change directory to a directory that you want to work in, and run the following command to clone the repository: ```console $ git clone https://github.com/mfranzon/r-docker-dev.git && cd r-docker-dev ``` You should now have the following contents in your `r-docker-dev` directory. ```text ├── r-docker-dev/ │ ├── src/ │ │ └── app.R │ ├── src_db/ │ │ └── app_db.R │ ├── compose.yaml │ ├── Dockerfile │ └── README.md ``` To learn more about the files in the repository, see the following: - [Dockerfile](/reference/dockerfile.md) - [.dockerignore](/reference/dockerfile.md#dockerignore-file) - [compose.yaml](/reference/compose-file/_index.md) ## Run the application Inside the `r-docker-dev` directory, run the following command in a terminal. ```console $ docker compose up --build ``` Open a browser and view the application at [http://localhost:3838](http://localhost:3838). You should see a simple Shiny application. In the terminal, press `ctrl`+`c` to stop the application. ### Run the application in the background You can run the application detached from the terminal by adding the `-d` option. Inside the `r-docker-dev` directory, run the following command in a terminal. ```console $ docker compose up --build -d ``` Open a browser and view the application at [http://localhost:3838](http://localhost:3838). You should see a simple Shiny application. In the terminal, run the following command to stop the application. ```console $ docker compose down ``` For more information about Compose commands, see the [Compose CLI reference](/reference/cli/docker/compose/_index.md). ## Summary In this section, you learned how you can containerize and run your R application using Docker. Related information: - [Docker Compose overview](/manuals/compose/_index.md) ## Next steps In the next section, you'll learn how you can develop your application using containers.

This section guides you through containerizing and running an R application using Docker, leveraging the Shiny framework. It starts with cloning a sample application, explains the purpose of key files like Dockerfile and compose.yaml, and demonstrates how to run the application, both attached to the terminal and in the background, using Docker Compose. The section concludes with a summary of what was learned and suggests next steps for developing applications using containers.