How do I access/print/track the current tab selection in a Shiny app?

Question

I am working within a shiny app and I want to be able to access information on the current tab a user is on in a session.

I have a observe event that listens for a parti

Answer 1

Since you haven't provided a minimal reproducible example, I have to make some guesses to produce an appropriate example - but it's fine :) It seems that you're using shinydashboard and in the app you have a sidebarMenu with at least two tabs.

I want to be able to access information on the current tab a user is on in a session.

You can give sidebarMenu an ID, say, tabs and then you can access the information on the current tab via input$tabs.

---

Let's take a look at an example below which highlights these two aspects

First, we "award" sidebarMenu with an unique ID

sidebarMenu(id = "tabs", 
      menuItem("Dashboard", tabName = "dashboard", icon = icon("dashboard")),
      menuItem("Help", tabName = "help", icon = icon("h-square"))
    )

and then spy on it on the server side with

observe({
    print(input$tabs)
  })

---

Full example:

library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)

ui <- dashboardPage(
  dashboardHeader(title = "Example"),
  dashboardSidebar(
    sidebarMenu(id = "tabs", # note the id
      menuItem("Dashboard", tabName = "dashboard", icon = icon("dashboard")),
      menuItem("Help", tabName = "help", icon = icon("h-square"))
    ),
    br(),
    # Teleporting button
    actionButton("teleportation", "Teleport to HELP", icon = icon("h-square"))
  ),
  dashboardBody(
    tabItems(
      tabItem(tabName = "dashboard",
              h2("Dashboard tab content")
      ),
      tabItem(tabName = "help",
              h2("Help tab content")
      )
    )
  )
)

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

  # prints acutall tab
  observe({
    print(input$tabs)
  })

  observeEvent(input$teleportation, {
    # if (USER$Logged == TRUE) {
    if (input$tabs != "help") { 
      # it requires an ID of sidebarMenu (in this case)
      updateTabItems(session, inputId = "tabs", selected = "help") 
    }
    #}
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)