Getting Started¶

Prerequisites¶

R Packages¶

The app requires the following R packages:

# Core Shiny packages
install.packages(c("shiny", "shinydashboard", "shinyWidgets",
                   "shinycssloaders", "shinyBS", "shinyjs"))

# Data manipulation
install.packages(c("dplyr", "tidyr", "readr", "data.table", "stringr"))

# API and web
install.packages(c("httr", "jsonlite", "RCurl", "rsdmx"))

# Visualization
install.packages(c("plotly", "DT"))

# Other utilities
install.packages(c("countrycode", "readxl", "stringdist", "base64enc"))

# DHS data
install.packages("rdhs")

Running Locally¶

Option 1: RStudio¶

Open the survey_data_fetcher.Rproj file in RStudio
Open app.R
Click "Run App" or press Ctrl+Shift+Enter

Option 2: Command Line¶

cd /path/to/survey_data_fetcher
R -e "shiny::runApp()"

Option 3: With specific port¶

shiny::runApp(host = "0.0.0.0", port = 3838)

Accessing on Hugging Face¶

The app is deployed at:

https://huggingface.co/spaces/CIJBoulange/survey-data-fetcher

No installation required - just open in your browser.

Environment Variables¶

Set up a .Renviron file with your API keys:

# .Renviron

# Required for UNWPP data fetching
UNWPP_TOKEN=your_unwpp_api_token_here

# Required for GitHub database integration
GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_personal_access_token_here

On Hugging Face Spaces, add these as secrets in Settings.

Getting a UNWPP Token¶

Go to population.un.org/dataportal
Register for an account
Request API access to get your token

Next Steps¶

Once set up, see Fetching Data for a complete workflow example.