Shiny script to automate commit push to a Github repo

README.md

You can configure a Shinyapps app to run a script that pushes a commit to a Github repo. Just:

• set up a Github access token with minimal permissions, e.g. Settings / Personal access tokens / Generate new token (tick repo permissions)
• deploy script to shinyapps.io, eg. rsconnect::deployApp(account = 'accountname')
• trigger it with a remote call (eg. crontab) like curl https://accountname.shinyapps.io/app_name/index.php

app.R

require(shiny)
library(git2r)

token = "xxx"

system('git clone https://github.com/accountname/reponame.git', intern = F)
cred = cred_user_pass(username = 'accountname', password = token)
repo = repository('reponame')
config(repo, user.name="accountname", user.email="xxx@xxx.com")

writeLines(as.character(Sys.time()), file.path(repo@path, "test.txt"))
add(repo, ".")
commit(repo, as.character(Sys.time()))
push(repo, "origin", "refs/heads/master", credentials = cred)
unlink('test', recursive = T)

server = function(input, output){
  output$confirmation = renderText('done')
}

ui <- basicPage(
  textOutput('confirmation')
)

shinyApp(ui, server)