Force shiny to render plot in loop

Question

I have a shiny app that runs a simulation. The goal is to show the user the calculation steps in between as a plot.

How do I force shiny to update the plot?

Answer 1

You could nest an observer into an observeEvent to make it work. Based on Jeff Allen's code from the SO topic you linked.

Crucial part:

observeEvent(input$run, {
    rv$i <- 0
    observe({
      isolate({
        rv$i <- rv$i + 1
      })

      if (isolate(rv$i) < maxIter){
        invalidateLater(2000, session)
      }
    })
  })

Full code:

library(shiny)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  rv <- reactiveValues(i = 0)
  maxIter <- 3

  output$myplot <- renderPlot( {
    if(rv$i > 0) {
      x <- seq_len(rv$i * 100)
      y <- (x + 1)^2 - 1 # this will do for now
      plot(x, y, main = sprintf("Round %i", rv$i), type = "l") 
    } else {
      plot(1:1, main = "Placeholder")
    }
  })

  observeEvent(input$run, {
    rv$i <- 0
    observe({
      isolate({
        rv$i <- rv$i + 1
      })

      if (isolate(rv$i) < maxIter){
        invalidateLater(2000, session)
      }
    })
  })

}

ui <- fluidPage(
  actionButton("run", "START"),
  plotOutput("myplot")
)

shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)