Show Corona Game when shiny disconnects

Are you bored or annoyed of shinyapps.io message "Disconnected from the server"? This message occurs because of inactivity in the app (idle state) for a long period of time or some programming error which may cause R session to shut down. If your app is in production you may also get escalation or stinkers from your client. At that time it is important to improve user experience via some creative methods. If you would be lucky you may get appreciation instead of escalation :-)

You can make the error message more fun by showing game in the screen when app is down (How about corona game?). This also works on your local machine or shiny server (not just shinyapps.io). Check out the demo app

Follow the steps below how to implement it in shiny. Copy the following program and paste it in R editor and save it as app.R

library(shiny)

# Define UI ----
ui <- fluidPage(

tags$head(tags$style("#shiny-disconnected-overlay {display: none !important}
                     #ss-overlay {display: none !important}
                     #ss-connect-dialog {display: none !important}")),
tags$script("

  $(function() {$(document).on('shiny:disconnected shiny:error', function(event) {
    $('.container-fluid').load('./game2.html');
  }) });

"),

actionButton("disconnect", "Disconnect the app")

)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  observeEvent(input$disconnect, {
    session$close()
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

Download supporting files from here and create www folder in the same location where app.R file is stored. Maintain the below folder structure.

├── app.R
└── www
└── 100-error-offline.png
└── 100-offline-sprite.png
└── 200-error-offline.png
└── 200-offline-sprite.png
└── game2.html   

Once you are done with the above two steps, just run the app.R. In the app screen, click on Disconnect the app button to see game.

Press "Space" to start the game and jump your corona icon. Use down arrow (↓) to duck.