In a R Shiny app, I try to show / hide the control bar from a server-side function. I cannot get this to work. I tried various things including fiddling a bit around with shinyjs.

Does anybody have an idea how to accomplish this? Attached my latest attempt.

library(shiny)
library(bs4Dash)
library(shinyjs)

ui <- dashboardPage(
  dashboardHeader(title = "Control Bar Toggle Example"),
  
  dashboardSidebar(
    shinyjs::useShinyjs(),  # Initialize shinyjs
    sidebarMenu(
      menuItem(
        "Dashboard",
        tabName = "dashboard",
        icon = icon("chart-pie")
      ),
      # Button to toggle control bar
      div(
        class = "text-center p-3",
        actionButton(
          inputId = "toggleControlBar", 
          label = "Toggle Control Bar",
          class = "btn-primary"
        )
      )
    )
  ),
  
  dashboardBody(
    tabItems(
      tabItem(
        tabName = "dashboard",
        h2("Welcome to the Dashboard")
      )
    )
  ),
  
  controlbar = dashboardControlbar(
    id = "myControlbar",  # Add an explicit ID
    title = "Control Bar",
    overlay = FALSE,
    div(
      h3("Control Bar Content"),
      p("This is the control bar that can be toggled.")
    )
  )
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  # Reactive value to track control bar state
  controlbar_visible <- reactiveVal(FALSE)
  
  observeEvent(input$toggleControlBar, {
    # Toggle the state
    new_state <- !controlbar_visible()
    controlbar_visible(new_state)
    
    # Use JavaScript to directly manipulate the control bar
    js_code <- sprintf("
      var controlbar = document.getElementById('myControlbar');
      if (controlbar) {
        controlbar.style.display = %s;
      }
    ", ifelse(new_state, "'block'", "'none'"))
    
    runjs(js_code)
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

In a R Shiny app, I try to show / hide the control bar from a server-side function. I cannot get this to work. I tried various things including fiddling a bit around with shinyjs.

Does anybody have an idea how to accomplish this? Attached my latest attempt.

library(shiny)
library(bs4Dash)
library(shinyjs)

ui <- dashboardPage(
  dashboardHeader(title = "Control Bar Toggle Example"),
  
  dashboardSidebar(
    shinyjs::useShinyjs(),  # Initialize shinyjs
    sidebarMenu(
      menuItem(
        "Dashboard",
        tabName = "dashboard",
        icon = icon("chart-pie")
      ),
      # Button to toggle control bar
      div(
        class = "text-center p-3",
        actionButton(
          inputId = "toggleControlBar", 
          label = "Toggle Control Bar",
          class = "btn-primary"
        )
      )
    )
  ),
  
  dashboardBody(
    tabItems(
      tabItem(
        tabName = "dashboard",
        h2("Welcome to the Dashboard")
      )
    )
  ),
  
  controlbar = dashboardControlbar(
    id = "myControlbar",  # Add an explicit ID
    title = "Control Bar",
    overlay = FALSE,
    div(
      h3("Control Bar Content"),
      p("This is the control bar that can be toggled.")
    )
  )
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  # Reactive value to track control bar state
  controlbar_visible <- reactiveVal(FALSE)
  
  observeEvent(input$toggleControlBar, {
    # Toggle the state
    new_state <- !controlbar_visible()
    controlbar_visible(new_state)
    
    # Use JavaScript to directly manipulate the control bar
    js_code <- sprintf("
      var controlbar = document.getElementById('myControlbar');
      if (controlbar) {
        controlbar.style.display = %s;
      }
    ", ifelse(new_state, "'block'", "'none'"))
    
    runjs(js_code)
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

• r
• shiny
• bs4dash

Share Improve this question Follow edited Mar 27 at 18:20 Jan 9,90566 gold badges2020 silver badges3333 bronze badges asked Mar 25 at 12:17 JochemJochem 3,42844 gold badges3232 silver badges5858 bronze badges

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2 Answers 2

Sorted by: Reset to default 1

There is a built-in function in bs4Dash which can be used for toggling the controlbar: bs4Dash::updateControlbar() (though its name does not really suggest this). You can call it from the server without additional custom JS:

observeEvent(input$toggleControlBar, {
  updateControlbar("myControlbar", session = session)
})

library(shiny)
library(bs4Dash)

ui <- bs4DashPage(
  dashboardHeader(title = "Control Bar Toggle Example"),
  
  dashboardSidebar(
    sidebarMenu(
      menuItem(
        "Dashboard",
        tabName = "dashboard",
        icon = icon("chart-pie")
      ),
      # Button to toggle control bar
      div(
        class = "text-center p-3",
        actionButton(
          inputId = "toggleControlBar", 
          label = "Toggle Control Bar",
          class = "btn-primary"
        )
      )
    )
  ),
  
  dashboardBody(
    tabItems(
      tabItem(
        tabName = "dashboard",
        h2("Welcome to the Dashboard")
      )
    )
  ),
  
  controlbar = dashboardControlbar(
    id = "myControlbar",  # Add an explicit ID
    title = "Control Bar",
    overlay = FALSE,
    div(
      h3("Control Bar Content"),
      p("This is the control bar that can be toggled.")
    )
  )
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  # Reactive value to track control bar state
  controlbar_visible <- reactiveVal(FALSE)
  
  observeEvent(input$toggleControlBar, {
    updateControlbar("myControlbar", session = session)
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

After posted, I came up with the following solution.

I wrote a simple function, which looks like:

toggleControlBar <- function(){
  runjs("document.querySelector('[data-widget=\"control-sidebar\"]').click();")
}

In the ui, I included: useShinyjs(), like:

ui <- bs4DashPage(
  useShinyjs(),
  ...

and then in the server function an observeEvent that response in this case to input$button_toggle. This function looks somehting like:

  observeEvent(input$button_toggle, {
    # Use shinyjs to run JavaScript to toggle the control sidebar
    toggleControlBar()
  })

Of course this toggleControlBar() can be used in many other places in the code to activate the controlBar.