Web Application Development with R Using Shiny - Second Edition

Data types and structures

There are many data types and structures of data within R. The following topics summarize some of the main types and structures that you will use when building Shiny applications.

Dataframes, lists, arrays, and matrices

Dataframes have several important features, which make them useful for data analysis:

• Rectangular data structures with the typical use being cases (for example, days in one month) down the rows and variables (page views, unique visitors, or referrers) along the columns.
• A mix of data types is supported. A typical dataframe might include variables containing dates, numbers (integers or floats), and text.
• With subsetting and variable extraction, R provides a lot of built-in functionality to select rows and variables ...