OnDemand Desktop App: RStudio Server

RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R. It includes a console, syntax-highlighting editor that supports direct code execution, as well as tools for plotting, history, debugging and workspace management.

Accessing through OnDemand

All the desktop apps can be found within the 'Desktop Apps' dropdown in our OnDemand web portal as shown in the image below:

After selecting RStudio Server, you will arrive at this page:

Here you can select the resources you would like your RStudio session to have using the menu on the lefthand side of the page. You can also access your files or launch the shell using the options in the center. After you click "Launch", a new session will be queued. Once the session is active you page will look like the image below:

Click on "Connect to RStudio Server" to begin using RStudio.

Using RStudio

Once you have entered your session, you should see the RStudio page below:

This is a typical RStudio interface that should be familiar to most users.

• Left panel: The console where you can type commands and see the output.
• Top right panel:
  • Environment tab: Shows all the active objects
  • History tab: Shows a list of commands used so far.
• Bottom right panel:
  • Files tab: Shows all the files and and folders in your home directory
  • Plots tab: Shows all your graphs
  • Packages tab: Lists a series of packages or add-ons needed to run certain processes
  • Help tab: Can be used to find additional info
  • Viewer tab: Used to view local web content

More info on RStudio and its use can be found on the RStudio official support page.