Images (static files?) in www/ not served in Positron

[xx02al]

In Shiny development, it’s a convention to place static files (like images) in a www/ folder, which Shiny then serves automatically. In Positron however, images (I did not try other types of static files) in the www/ directory don’t appear—images are missing both in the Positron Viewer and when opened in a default browser. If we were to run the same app in RStudio, it works as expected.

Here’s a reprex. When running the following app, the image referenced by tags$img(src = "logo.png") displays in RStudio, but not in Positron:

library(shiny)
library(bslib)

ui <- page_sidebar(
  title = "My Shiny App",
  card(
    card_header("Introducing Shiny"),
    card_body(
      tags$img(src = "logo.png", alt = "Logo"),
      "In RStudio, we get both images—the one above and the one below. In
      Positron, however, we only get the one below.",
      card_image("www/logo.png", alt = "Logo")
    ),
    card_footer("Shiny is a product of Posit.")
  )
)

server <- function(input, output) {}

shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Screenshots can be found at the bottom.

• The app and logo.png are in the standard locations (logo.png is in www/).
• This is on Windows and I did not had the chance to test on other OSes.
• Positron version is the most recent as by "Check for Updates" (and I don't remember to have seen it working in Positron before with Positron being my main IDE since many versions ago).

I would find it quite nice to see images while developing, thus my questions:

• Did I miss something and the convention with www/ is not recommended practice anymore/in Positron?
• If it's indeed an issue is it possible to fix it? Should I open an issue?

Screenshot Positron:

Screenshot RStudio:

[juliasilge]

Do you have the Shiny extension installed? We don't currently include it by default, although that is about to change: #1301

If I have the Shiny extension installed and then do Shiny: Run Shiny App (either from the command palette or from the "Run" button on the toolbar, I do see both images:

[xx02al]

Yes, the Shiny extension solves the problem of images not being displayed.

[juliasilge]

Great! Apologies for the confusion, and we can take this as yet more support for bundling that extension.