3:45 – 4:15 PM – ODAPES: A Low-Code Extension for R-Shiny to Democratize Digital Agriculture

ODAPES’ Mission is to Democratize Digital Agriculture by giving all farmers, farming service providers and local cooperatives access to a low-cost, cutting-edge, and customized Digital Agriculture App . R-Shiny is the perfect tool for this task. However, despite this great package it is still a challenge to build customized, production-grade R-Shiny App at scale, because the needed R coding skills are not abundant . To address this challenge, we have developed a Low-Code Extension to R-Shiny, specific for ODAPES-Style Digital Agriculture Apps. This allows junior developers to create in a matter of hours production grade Apps with access to different microservices like API’s, GIS algorithms and RMarkdown reports. The system includes two parts: (1) A modular R-Shiny App-Skeleton, which allows to replicate, adapt, and customize a production-grade app. This part makes extensive use of Shiny modules, and Microservices and it includes 8 own R-packages. (2) A second R-Shiny App, called ApplicatoR, from which the Low-Code developer can customize the production App, including the stylesheet. This uses the packages DT, sortable and bs4Dash. The key of the system is a JS-binding for Shiny’s inputIds, which return intelligent information and makes the entire system modular and reproducible. The concept has already been successfully prototyped with clients across Latin America and developers from Venezuela, Brazil, Nigeria, and Chile, creating both affordable technology and local income opportunities.