Kiosc: an integrated platform for managing bioinformatics data analysis containers

Bioinformatic data analysis projects often require the visualization of plots and results through interactive web apps or dashboards. These apps can be shared with customers, collaborators, or the public, but sharing them becomes challenging as the number of projects and customers increases. Docker containers provide a straightforward method to package, distribute, and run these interactive web apps, and their usage is common within the bioinformatics community.

The developers created Kiosc to ease the management of containerized web apps, allowing them to be organized into projects and controlled through access regulations.

Kiosc functions as a web server, built on the Django framework, with a user- and admin-friendly interface, along with a REST API for executing programmatic tasks. Users can choose Docker containers that house various apps, such as Plotly Dash, Shiny, or Quarto, and configure them to showcase their analysis results. Kiosc manages the containers by setting up the necessary network configurations and acts as a proxy to the web services running within the containers.

The platform has been consistently maintained for over five years and has served 321 containers across 150 projects in various institutions. This article introduces the primary features of Kiosc and explores four use cases that highlight its value to the broader bioinformatics community. These cases include configuring and running web apps for interactive visualization of workflow results and publishing companion apps for scientific articles.

Kiosc is a self-hosted platform designed for publishing web apps, offering a convenient alternative to Kubernetes without requiring significant expertise in Docker or network administration.