How can I access JS variable name for rhandsontable rendered in Shiny?

Question

I use rhandsontable package to create interactive tables in Shiny app.

I need some cells to be selected programmatically, based on some other user actions. However, I could not find such functionality in rhandsontable wrapper in R.

Meanwhile, it is definitely possible in native Handsontable.js with selectCell() function. I attach small jsfiddle example:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function() {
  var data = [
    ["", "Ford", "Volvo", "Toyota", "Honda"],
    ["2014", 10, 11, 12, 13],
    ["2015", 20, 11, 14, 13],
    ["2016", 30, 15, 12, 13]
  ];

  var container = document.getElementById('example1');
  var hot = new Handsontable(container, {
    data: data,
    minSpareRows: 1,
    rowHeaders: true,
    colHeaders: true,
    contextMenu: true
  });

  hot.selectCell(1, 0);
})

</style><!--  --><script src="https://docs.handsontable.com/0.15.0/scripts/jquery.min.js"></script><script src="https://docs.handsontable.com/0.15.0/bower_components/handsontable/dist/handsontable.full.js"></script><link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="https://docs.handsontable.com/0.15.0/bower_components/handsontable/dist/handsontable.full.min.css">

<div id="example1" class="hot handsontable"></div>

http://jsfiddle.net/vz74zeqo/

So, I could run shinyjs::runjs('hot.selectCell(1,0);') and everything would be fine.

But the question is: how can I learn the JS variable name, associated with the table, when it is created with renderRHandsontable() function in Shiny? (in my example it is named hot)

Thanks!

Alex

Answer 1

This post helped: Search from a textInput to a Handsontable in Shiny

When I rendered rhandsontable via output$myTab = renderRHandsontable({rhandsontabe(faithful)}) then I can use following command in JS getInstance():

HTMLWidgets.getInstance(myTab).hot.selectCell(0,1)