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Milestone 3 - App development an deployment in R¶

This week you will setup a new project on GitHub.com, and recreate your dashboard using the R implementation of dash and plotly. You will see in lecture that the app skeleton and the entire layout part is very similar to what you have done in Python. You will also respond to you TAs feedback for milestone 1, and explore if you can implement any of their suggestions, details below. You will also give feedback to another group on their dashboard.

1. Submission instructions¶

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Create a new github.com repo for your dashr project¶

  • You will create a new repo for this project

  • Name it the same as your Python dashboard repo plus a -R suffix so it is easy to find.

    • your-previous-repo-name-R

  • Copy over your contributing guidelines, code of conduct README file, and the necessary data files.

    • Update your README with a link to the deployed R dashboard and a new image/gif of the R dashboard in action.

Canvas submission¶

  • Once you have finished the work for this milestone you must create a release on GitHub.com before the submission deadline.

  • The only thing you need to submit to Canvas is a link to your Github release

    • If you do the optional exercise, also include a link to the issue where you write your feedback.

Tips for working collaboratively on GitHub¶

  • Every time you work on the project, you should first pull the upstream changes.

  • Use GitHub issues to track features that you are planning to implement and bugs in the app.

  • Try to commit to git often when you work on this project.

    • If you are working together synchronously and a team-member has already approved your changes, you can commit directly to the main branch. Otherwise, create a pull-request and request a review from a teammate.

      • The TAs will check that you have some issues and PRs in your repo for this milestone

    • You can either work on different branches directly in the repo you created, or fork the repo and work on a branch in your own fork.

2. Deployment on Heroku¶

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There are currently some issues with dash-r deployment because plotly updated their docker images, but not their documentation, so neither the official setup or the one from last year’s class is working at the moment. I will give an update on lecture 6 on Wed if we can figure this out before then.

  • Deploy your app on Heroku and include the link to your deployed dashboard clearly visible near the top of your README.

  • Don’t push to Heroku after the milestone deadline.

    • We will compare the milestone release commits with the deployed app so updating it after the deadline will give a late penalty. If you want your newest changes deployed online, you can create a new heroku repo.

  • Heroku does not have native support for R so we will need to use a docker image provided by Dash.

    • We will follow the dash docs.

      • You need to change the Dockerfile to make sure you get version 3.6.3 of the docker image instead of 3.6.2.

    • Because of this, I don’t want to change the file structure from the docs, so put your app.R in the root project folder (together with all other files mentioned in the deployment docs),

    • Any other folders can be the same as for your Python project.

  • Don’t wait to deploy until the last minute, you will not have time to solve potential issues.

    • Deploy early and check that things are working, then redeploy every now and then.

    • After making the milestone release, make a final push to Heroku to redeploy the miletone app.

    • This is especially important for R, since it takes about 15 min for the docker image to deploy.

3. Interactive Dash app with R and ggplotly¶

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  • Implement the same dashboard as in milestone 2.

  • You don’t need to rewrangle your raw data

    • I you already have processed data files, feel free to use those.

  • The goal is to implement most of your milestone 2 dashboard so that you can compare dashboard development in Python and R.

    • Your should be able to get your app layout to look very similar as milestone 2.

    • For the plots, there might be parts that are not possible to implement the same as in Altair without a lot of work and those you can skip or design differently. There might also be parts that are easier to implement with ggplotly, so it makes sense to design it in another way.

  • The main reason to deviate from your milestone 2 dashboard is if your TA has given you feedback that you want to implement. For milestone 3 you are expected to reply to you TAs feedback on your proposal from milestone 1.

    • For aspects of the feedback that you plan on implementing, create new issues and link to the issue your TA created so that they can easily find the new ones.

    • For aspects that you want to keep discussing with your TA, you can reply to them in the issue they created or chat with them during lab or OH.

      • If you do the latter, please document briefly in the issue what you agreed to in person.

    • When grading this milestone, your TA will check the miestone 1 feedback issue they created for comments and links to features you plan to implement, so make sure to include these!

  • It is up to you wether you want to implement the TA feedback in this or the next milestone.

    • I know quiz week is tough, so I will let you plan your own time for this task.

    • For milestone 4, you will need to have replied to all your TA feedback from milestone 1 and 2, and have implemented some suggested features.

      • So if you want to focus on the quizzes this week and implement most of the feedback next week that is totally fine (you still need to reply to the feedback from milestone 1 and create issues for what you plan to implement as described above).

    • For milestone 4, you will choose to work in either R or Python, so your strategy for milestone 3 could be to either develop exactly the same app to compare with last week, or since your are starting over anyways, try to implement some TA feedback and see how you like it compare to your original design.

  • Again, the app should be easily usable, so focus on the most important things first.

  • Note that TAs will be grading your app on Heroku in a full-screen window

  • Don’t get hung up of minor styling details, you will get to this in milestone 4!

4. Reflection¶

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In this section, your group should document on what you have implemented in your dashboard so far and explain what is not yet implemented. It is important that you include what you know is not working in your dashboard, so that your TAs can distinguish between features in development and bugs.

This week it is suitable to include some brief thoughts on the experience of implementing the dashboard a second time in another language. You could also mention some feedback you have received and how that has impacted your future planning. This section should be around 300-400 words and the reflection-milestone3.md document should live in your GitHub.com repo in the doc folder.

5. Give peer feedback to another group (Optional)¶

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Done in class in Lecture 7

Milestone 2 - App development and deployment Milestone 4 - Finalizing your dashboard