Downloading png from Shiny (R) - r

Question

I am pretty new to Shiny (and R) and struggling with exporting the plot I make in Shiny to a png-file.
I looked at these two threads but could not figure it out:
Save plots made in a shiny app
Shiny downloadHandler doesn't save PNG files
I manage to create the download button in the ui and the server seems to be doing everything I want it to do, too. When I hit the download button in the preview window, a pop up window asks me to specify the file location and name but no file is saved. When I do the same in a browser window, a png file is created but it is empty.
Any insight is much appreciated!
ui.R
library(shiny)
shinyUI(fluidPage(
titlePanel("This is a scatterplot"),
sidebarLayout(
sidebarPanel(
fileInput('datafile', 'Choose CSV file',
accept=c('text/csv', 'text/comma-separated-values,text/plain')),
uiOutput("varselect1"),
uiOutput("varselect2"),
downloadButton('downloadPlot', 'Download Plot')
),
mainPanel(
h4("Here is your scatterplot"),
plotOutput("plot1")
)
))
)
server.R
library(foreign)
shinyServer(function(session,input, output) {
DataInput <- reactive({
infile <- input$datafile
if (is.null(infile)) {
return(NULL)
}
read.csv(infile$datapath)
})
output$varselect1 <- renderUI({
if (identical(DataInput(), '') || identical(DataInput(),data.frame())) return(NULL)
cols <- names(DataInput())
selectInput("var1", "Select a variable:",choices=c("---",cols[3:length(cols)]), selected=("---"))
})
output$varselect2 <- renderUI({
if (identical(DataInput(), '') || identical(DataInput(),data.frame())) return(NULL)
cols <- names(DataInput())
selectInput("var2", "Select a variable:",choices=c("---",cols[3:length(cols)]), selected=("---"))
})
plotInput <- reactive({
a <- which(names(DataInput())==input$var1)
x_lab <- as.numeric(DataInput()[,a])
b <- which(names(DataInput())==input$var2)
y_lab <- as.numeric(DataInput()[,b])
main.text <- paste("Scatterplot of the variables",colnames(DataInput())[a],"and", colnames(DataInput())[b],sep = " ", collapse = NULL)
plot(x_lab, y_lab, main=main.text, xlab=colnames(DataInput())[a], ylab=colnames(DataInput())[b], xlim=c(min(x_lab),max(x_lab)*1.05), ylim=c(min(y_lab), max(y_lab)*1.05))
observations <- DataInput()[,1]
text(x_lab, y_lab, labels=observations, pos=3)
})
output$plot1 <- renderPlot({
print(plotInput())
})
output$downloadPlot <- downloadHandler(
filename = "Shinyplot.png",
content = function(file) {
png(file)
print(plotInput())
dev.off()
})
})

Answer 1

A workaround for this strange scenario was discussed on the shiny-discuss google group. What you can do is simply change your reactive plotInput statement into a normal function. Not sure why downloadHandler doesn't play nice with reactive objects.
# change
plotInput <- reactive({...})
# into this
plotInput <- function(){...}
You can also remove the print statement in the downloadHandler call:
output$downloadPlot <- downloadHandler(
filename = "Shinyplot.png",
content = function(file) {
png(file)
plotInput()
dev.off()
})