If you haven't already been tempted, now is definitely a good time to have a go at building your own application with your own data. The next chapter covers advanced topics in Shiny and, though you are welcome to plough on, a little practical experience with the functions will stand you in good stead for the next chapter. If you're interested in sharing your creations right away, feel free to jump to Chapter 7, Sharing Your Creations.

How you go about building your first application will very much depend on your previous experience and what you want to achieve with Shiny, but as with everything in life, it is better to start simple. Start with the minimal example given in the previous chapter and put in some data that's relevant to you. Shiny applications can be hard to debug (compared with interactive R sessions, at least), so in your early forays, keep things very simple.

For example, instead of drawing a graph, start with a simple renderText() call and just print the first few...