Talk to me, Google Analytics

A simple Shiny app to display some Google Analytics data, and talk over some statistics of that data, using googleAnalyticsR and googleLanguageR::gl_talk()

A videocast describing how to create this app is available on YouTube here

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Ht_vEXJ4wo" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Install

It needs these libraries:

library(shiny)             # R webapps
library(gentelellaShiny)   # ui theme
library(googleAuthR)       # auth login
library(googleAnalyticsR)  # get google analytics
library(googleLanguageR)   # talking
library(dygraphs)          # plots 
library(xts)               # time-series

It needs the CRAN versions of these libraries:

install.packages(c("shiny","googleAnalyticsR", "dygraphs", "xts"))

...and the GitHub versions of these:

remotes::install_github("MarkEdmondson1234/googleAuthR")
remotes::install_github("ropensci/googleLanguageR")
remotes::install_github("MarkEdmondson1234/gentelellaShiny")

Auth

You then need authentication setup as per the libraries installation instructions.

• In my Google console set the Authorised JavaScript origins to http://localhost:1221 and make sure Shiny always launches on that port by setting options(shiny.port = 1221) (I have this in my .Rprofile)

You set this at this link: https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials

This screen also has Download JSON at the top which is the client secret used within GAR_CLIENT_WEB_JSON below for gar_set_client()

For this app in particular I have these environment arguments set in my .Renviron:

• GAR_CLIENT_WEB_JSON pointing at my download client secret (web app) for my project that has Google Analytics and Google Text-to-speech APIs activated for gar_set_client()
• Turned off auto auth for googleAnalyticsR by commenting out GA_AUTH_FILE for google_analytics()
• Had my authentication service JSON for cloud platform set in GL_AUTH for gl_talk()

The JS auth (gar_auth_jsUI()) will only work if you are on http://localhost:1221 and not on http://127.0.0.1:1221 (the default when launching in RStudio), so change the address in the browser (the are both the same, but Google won't allow ip addresses as a JavaScript origin.)

I find it easiest to set RStudio to launch the shiny app in the Viewer pane, then have the browser set to localhost:1221 which I refresh on each new launch.

Screenshot