R Shiny selectedInput inside renderDataTable cells

Question

I search for solution to put selectedInputs in renderDataTable cells. I found js solutions: https://datatables.net/examples/api/form.html , however I do not know how to implement this solution in shinyjs as renderDataTable object. I would be grateful for hints / ideas / solutions how to implement editable renderDataTable in shiny.

Answer 1

Very similar to this: adding a column with TRUE/FALSE and showing that as a checkbox

library(shiny)
library(DT) 
runApp(list(
  ui = basicPage(
    h2('The mtcars data'),
    DT::dataTableOutput('mytable'),
    h2("Selected"),
    tableOutput("checked")
  ),

  server = function(input, output) {
    # helper function for making checkbox
    shinyInput = function(FUN, len, id, ...) { 
      inputs = character(len) 
      for (i in seq_len(len)) { 
        inputs[i] = as.character(FUN(paste0(id, i), label = NULL, ...)) 
      } 
      inputs 
    } 
    # datatable with checkbox
    output$mytable = DT::renderDataTable({
      data.frame(mtcars,Rating=shinyInput(selectInput,nrow(mtcars),"selecter_",
                                            choices=1:5, width="60px"))
    }, selection='none',server = FALSE, escape = FALSE, options = list( 
      paging=TRUE,
      preDrawCallback = JS('function() { 
Shiny.unbindAll(this.api().table().node()); }'), 
      drawCallback = JS('function() { 
Shiny.bindAll(this.api().table().node()); } ') 
    ) )
    # helper function for reading checkbox
    shinyValue = function(id, len) { 
      unlist(lapply(seq_len(len), function(i) { 
        value = input[[paste0(id, i)]] 
        if (is.null(value)) NA else value 
      })) 
    } 
    # output read checkboxes
    output$checked <- renderTable({
      data.frame(selected=shinyValue("selecter_",nrow(mtcars)))
    })
  }
))

Note that if you rerender the table, the inputs won't work unless you add some extra code to unbind.

edit:

Let's say the data in the table is reactive so it changes, and the table rerenders. You will need to explicitely unbind as per @yihui here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/shiny-discuss/ZUMBGGl1sss/zfcG9c6MBAAJ

So you need to add in the UI:

tags$script(HTML("Shiny.addCustomMessageHandler('unbind-DT', function(id) {
          Shiny.unbindAll($('#'+id).find('table').DataTable().table().node());
        })"))

And then in the Server you trigger the function whenever you rerender the datatable with:

session$sendCustomMessage('unbind-DT', 'mytable')

The colnames parameter is a vector of column names so when you specify a length one vector of FALSE it gives you a table with one column named FALSE. I am not sure of a straightforward way of removing column names from datatables. That would be a good SO question on its own.