R Shiny - make input reactive to other input on page, but the main function reactive to submit button

Question

I have a shiny app where the user selects two date ranges, and a submit button The first date range is for the analysis period, while the second date range is a range that should fall within the first date range.

I'm using dateRangeInput, and I want to set the min and max date for the second dateRangeInput equal to the user-selected time period from the first dateRangeInput. My problem right now is that the way I have it set up right now, the second dateRangeInput doesn't refresh until the user hits submit, whereas I'd like it to refresh as soon as the first dateRangeInput changes.

How do I achieve this?

So far my code looks like this:

#ui.R
shinyUI(fluidPage(
    sidebarLayout(
      sidebarPanel(
        dateRangeInput('inputDate', 'Select date range for analysis period', start = '2015-07-01', end = '2015-07-03', min = min_date, max = max_date),
    #the output below is refreshing only when the user hits submit, but I would like it to refresh as soon as the first dateRangeInput changes.
    uiOutput('return_dates'),
    submitButton("Submit")
  ),
      mainPanel()
)))

#server.R
shinyServer(function(input, output, session) {
  ret_min <- reactive({
    input$inputDate[1]
  })

  ret_max <- reactive({
    input$inputDate[2]
  })
  output$return_dates <- renderUI({
      dateRangeInput('inputDate2', 'Select date range for return period', start = '2015-07-01', end = '2015-07-02', min = ret_min(), max = ret_max())
    })
  analysisFunction <- reactive({
      #code here performs analysis based on the given date range, and should run only when the user hits submit
    })
})

md1630 md1630 · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-13T20:10:02

I found a solution to this, which is to use actionButton rather than submitButton, which allows me to specify which functions should react only when the action button is hit, while the remaining functions will respond as soon as an input is changed.

#ui.R
shinyUI(fluidPage(
    sidebarLayout(
      sidebarPanel(
        dateRangeInput('inputDate', 'Select date range for analysis period', start = '2015-07-01', end = '2015-07-03', min = min_date, max = max_date),
    uiOutput('return_dates'),
    actionButton("submitButton","Submit")
  ),
      mainPanel()
)))

#server.R
shinyServer(function(input, output, session) {
  ret_min <- reactive({
    input$inputDate[1]
  })

  ret_max <- reactive({
    input$inputDate[2]
  })
  output$return_dates <- renderUI({
      dateRangeInput('inputDate2', 'Select date range for return period', start = '2015-07-01', end = '2015-07-02', min = ret_min(), max = ret_max())
    })
  analysisFunction <- reactiveEvent({input$submitButton, {
    #code here will only run when user hits submit
    }) 


})

R Shiny - make input reactive to other input on page, but the main function reactive to submit button

1 Answers