shiny.router and shinydashboard

Question

Suppose you have a simple shinydashboard which contains links created with menuItem and pages created with tabItems :

library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)

skin <- Sys.getenv("DASHBOARD_SKIN")
skin <- tolower(skin)
skin <- "blue"

## ui.R ##
sidebar <- dashboardSidebar(
  sidebarMenu(
    menuItem("Dashboard", tabName = "dashboard", icon = icon("dashboard")),
    menuItem("Widgets", icon = icon("th"), tabName = "widgets",
             badgeLabel = "new", badgeColor = "green")
  )
)

body <- dashboardBody(
  tabItems(
    tabItem(tabName = "dashboard",
            h2("Dashboard tab content")
    ),
    
    tabItem(tabName = "widgets",
            h2("Widgets tab content")
    )
  )
)

# Put them together into a dashboardPage
ui<-dashboardPage(
  dashboardHeader(title = "Simple tabs"),
  sidebar,
  body
)


server <- function(input, output) {
  
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

Is it possible to create permalinks for the pages? eg the home page ( tabName == "dashboard") has a URL of 127.0.0.1:1234/home and the widgets page is at 127.0.0.1:1234/widgets?

It seems that shiny doesn't have URL routing out of the box. shiny.router seems to be a possible alternative but I've found no easy ways to do this with shinydashboard ie with the use of menuItem and tabItem . I'm trying to avoid rewriting the app's UI to use something which is more tightly integrated with shiny.router (eg shiny.semantic )

Is it possible to keep the above shinydashboard code while implementing permalinks to the various different pages?

Answer 1

Edit : Actually we can do the same without bookmarking using getQueryString and updateTabItems :

library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)

ui <- function(request) {
  dashboardPage(
    header = dashboardHeader(title = "Simple tabs"),
    sidebar = dashboardSidebar(
      sidebarMenu(
        id = "sidebarID",
        menuItem(
          "Dashboard",
          tabName = "dashboard",
          icon = icon("dashboard")
        ),
        menuItem(
          "Widgets",
          icon = icon("th"),
          tabName = "widgets",
          badgeLabel = "new",
          badgeColor = "green"
        )
      )
    ),
    body = dashboardBody(tabItems(
      tabItem(tabName = "dashboard",
              h2("Dashboard tab content")),
      tabItem(tabName = "widgets",
              h2("Widgets tab content"))
    ))
  )
}

server <- function(input, output, session) {

  observeEvent(input$sidebarID, {
    # http://127.0.0.1:6172/?tab=dashboard
    # http://127.0.0.1:6172/?tab=widgets
    
    newURL <- paste0(
        session$clientData$url_protocol,
        "//",
        session$clientData$url_hostname,
        ":",
        session$clientData$url_port,
        session$clientData$url_pathname,
        "?tab=",
        input$sidebarID
      )
    updateQueryString(newURL, mode = "replace", session)
  })
  
  observe({
    currentTab <- getQueryString(session)$tab # alternative: parseQueryString(session$clientData$url_search)$tab
    if(!is.null(currentTab)){
      updateTabItems(session, "sidebarID", selected = currentTab)
    }
  })
  
}

shinyApp(ui, server, enableBookmarking = "disable")

---

Not sure if you are interested in a workaround like this, but you could use shiny's bookmarking and updateQueryString to achive a similar behaviour:

library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)

ui <- function(request) {
  dashboardPage(
    header = dashboardHeader(title = "Simple tabs"),
    sidebar = dashboardSidebar(
      sidebarMenu(
        id = "sidebarID",
        menuItem(
          "Dashboard",
          tabName = "dashboard",
          icon = icon("dashboard")
        ),
        menuItem(
          "Widgets",
          icon = icon("th"),
          tabName = "widgets",
          badgeLabel = "new",
          badgeColor = "green"
        )
      )
    ),
    body = dashboardBody(tabItems(
      tabItem(tabName = "dashboard",
              h2("Dashboard tab content")),
      tabItem(tabName = "widgets",
              h2("Widgets tab content"))
    ))
  )
}


server <- function(input, output, session) {
  bookmarkingWhitelist <- c("sidebarID")
  
  observe({
    setBookmarkExclude(setdiff(names(input), bookmarkingWhitelist))
  })
  
  observeEvent(input$sidebarID, {
    # http://127.0.0.1:6172/?_inputs_&sidebarID=%22dashboard%22
    # http://127.0.0.1:6172/?_inputs_&sidebarID=%22widgets%22
    
    newURL <- paste0(
        session$clientData$url_protocol,
        "//",
        session$clientData$url_hostname,
        ":",
        session$clientData$url_port,
        session$clientData$url_pathname,
        "?_inputs_&sidebarID=%22",
        input$sidebarID,
        "%22"
      )
    
    updateQueryString(newURL,
                      mode = "replace",
                      session)
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server, enableBookmarking = "url")

Some related links:

• https://rstudio.github.io/shinydashboard/behavior.html#bookmarking
• It is possible to restore a session, locally, in a Shiny app if the inputs have been previously written in a RDS file?
• shinyjs - setBookmarkExclude for delay IDs