shinymanager

Simple and secure authentification mechanism for single 'Shiny' applications. Credentials are stored in an encrypted 'SQLite' database. Source code of main application is protected until authentication is successful.

Live demo:

• On Shiny-server: http://shinyapps.dreamrs.fr/shinymanager-demo/
• On shinyapps.io : https://dreamrs.shinyapps.io/shinymanager-demo/

You can authenticate with:

• user: shiny / password: shiny
• user: shinymanager / password: shinymanager (Admin)

Installation

Install from CRAN with :

install.packages("shinymanager")

Or install development version from GitHub :

remotes::install_github("datastorm-open/shinymanager")

Usage

Secure your Shiny app to control who can access it :

• secure_app() & auth_ui() (customization)
• secure_server() & check_credentials()

# define some credentials
credentials <- data.frame(
  user = c("shiny", "shinymanager"), # mandatory
  password = c("azerty", "12345"), # mandatory
  start = c("2019-04-15"), # optinal (all others)
  expire = c(NA, "2019-12-31"),
  admin = c(FALSE, TRUE),
  comment = "Simple and secure authentification mechanism 
  for single ‘Shiny’ applications.",
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

library(shiny)
library(shinymanager)

ui <- fluidPage(
  tags$h2("My secure application"),
  verbatimTextOutput("auth_output")
)

# Wrap your UI with secure_app
ui <- secure_app(ui)


server <- function(input, output, session) {
  
  # call the server part
  # check_credentials returns a function to authenticate users
  res_auth <- secure_server(
    check_credentials = check_credentials(credentials)
  )
  
  output$auth_output <- renderPrint({
    reactiveValuesToList(res_auth)
  })
  
  # your classic server logic
  
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

Starting page of the application will be :

Once logged, the application will be launched and a button added to navigate between the app and the admin panel (SQL credentials only and if user is authorized to access it), and to logout from the application :

Secure database

Store your credentials data in SQL database protected with a symmetric AES encryption from openssl :

• create_db()

# Credentials data
credentials <- data.frame(
  user = c("shiny", "shinymanager"),
  password = c("azerty", "12345"),
  admin = c(FALSE, TRUE),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

# you can use keyring package to set database key
library(keyring)
key_set("R-shinymanager-key", "obiwankenobi")

# Init the database
create_db(
  credentials_data = credentials,
  sqlite_path = "path/to/database.sqlite", # will be created
  passphrase = key_get("R-shinymanager-key", "obiwankenobi")
)

Admin mode

Using SQL database protected, an admin mode is available to manage access to the application, features included are

• manage users account : add, modify and delete users
• ask the user to change his password
• see logs about application usage

HTTP request

shinymanager use http request and sha256 tokens to grant access to the application, like this the source code is protected without having the need to change your UI or server code.

About security

The credentials database is secured with a pass phrase and the openssl package. If you have concern about method we use, please fill an issue.

Related work

Package shinyauthr provides a nice shiny module to add an authentication layer to your shiny apps.