Opening multiple sidebar Items causes reloading-failure in renderUI / uiOutput (?)

[gr3gor]

Hello !

The code below creates a Sidebar with TabItems; those again contain Subtabs which will eventually address some ouput in the mainBody when clicked.

My problem is that when e.g. TAB3 is open and I click to open TAB1 (or TAB2) without closing TAB3, then TAB3 will not load anymore (it does open though, as seen by the subItem icon >>)

I use renderUI and uiOutput to accomplish this and I use "do.call" to set up the submenus...

I already tried changing menuItem to menuSubItem etc. ... that does not seem to do the trick. Is this "normal behaviour" or am I missing something (?)

Do you always have to close a Tab before opening another one?

Any help is appreciated of course!

Thanks, gregor

library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)
## set up a main body... no content needed
body <- dashboardBody( title="Title" )
## set up a sidebar with TABS containing subTABS
## the subTABS are adressed via an uiOutput() 
sidebar <- dashboardSidebar (
  ##
  sidebarMenu(
    menuItem("TAB1",menuSubItem(uiOutput("Sidebar_sub1")) ),
    menuItem("TAB2",menuSubItem(uiOutput("Sidebar_sub2"))  ),
    menuItem("TAB3",menuSubItem(uiOutput("Sidebar_sub3"))  ) )
) 
##
server <- function(input, output) {
  ## starting parameters
  nsubtabs    <- 9
  tabnames <- paste0("subtab",1:nsubtabs)
  ## set up a list for all subtabs
  Menus_sub <- vector("list", nsubtabs)
  for(i in 1:nsubtabs) {
    Menus_sub[[i]] <- menuSubItem(tabnames[i], tabName = tabnames[i]) }
  ## use renderUI to create sidebar-output
  output$Sidebar_sub1 <- renderUI({  
    do.call(function(...) sidebarMenu(id = "sidebarMenu_sub1", ...), Menus_sub[1:3])
  })
  ##
  output$Sidebar_sub2 <- renderUI({  
    do.call(function(...) sidebarMenu(id = "sidebarMenu_sub2", ...), Menus_sub[4:6])
  })
  ##
  output$Sidebar_sub3 <- renderUI({  
    do.call(function(...) sidebarMenu(id = "sidebarMenu_sub3", ...), Menus_sub[7:9])
  })
  ##
}
##
ui <- dashboardPage(dashboardHeader(title = "Title2"), sidebar,body)
##
shinyApp(ui, server)

[gr3gor]

Hi there,

I found a solution: replace the uiOutput() in the sidebarMenu() with dropdownMenuOutput(), such as:

sidebar <- dashboardSidebar (
  ##
  sidebarMenu(
    menuItem("TAB1",menuSubItem(dropdownMenuOutput("Sidebar_sub1")) ),
    menuItem("TAB2",menuSubItem(dropdownMenuOutput("Sidebar_sub2"))  ),
    menuItem("TAB3",menuSubItem(dropdownMenuOutput("Sidebar_sub3"))  ) )
) 

It seems like after that change, the menus that are created dynamically are fit into the dropdown, instaed of going into separate menuItems. All good now!

Thanks,
gregor