84

I've got a shiny server version 0.4.0 and I want to have 4 small textInput boxes to look like this:

x-min x-max y-min y-max
[...] [...] [...] [...]

They now look like this:

x-min 
[...................]
x-max
[...................]
y-min 
[...................]
y-max 
[...................]

With this code:

textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0),
textInput(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5),
textInput(inputId="ylimitsmin", label="y-min", value = 0.5),
textInput(inputId="ylimitsmax", label="y-max", value = 1.0),

Any ideas how to achieve this?

EDITED: I've successfully changed things like this elsewhere in the code:

<style type="text/css">select#yaxis4 { height: 280px; width: 500px; }</style>
[... which links to this later on in the page...]
          <label class="control-label" for="yaxis4">Y-Axis</label>
          <select id="yaxis4" multiple="multiple">

And this is what it looks like for the ones that don't work:

<style type="text/css">select#xlimitsmax { display: inline-block; max-width: 50px; }</style>
[... which links to...]
          <label>x-max</label>
          <input id="xlimitsmax" type="text" value="0.5"/>

EDITED:

Here is a self contained example ui.R that doesn't work:

library(shiny)
shinyUI(
pageWithSidebar(
  # application title
  headerPanel("test01"),
  sidebarPanel(
    tags$head(
      tags$style(type="text/css", "select { max-width: 360px; }"),
      tags$style(type="text/css", ".span4 { max-width: 360px; }"),
      tags$style(type="text/css",  ".well { max-width: 360px; }")
              ),
    wellPanel(
      p(strong("Side Panel:"))
             )
   ),
  mainPanel(
    textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0),
    tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "select#xlimitsmin { max-width: 50px }")),
    textInput(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5),
    tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "select#xlimitsmax { display: inline-block; max-width: 50px; }"))
    )
))

Resulting page:

enter image description here

719016
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  • Where in the code are your ` – John Paul Jan 06 '14 at 16:37
  • the style statements are dispersed in the shiny ui.R file and get put in the html head (`tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "select#something { height: 200px; width: 300px; }"))`). If I do something like the following, still doesn't work: `tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "select#xlimitsmin { max-width: 50px }"))` – 719016 Jan 06 '14 at 17:18
  • Ping! Bounty in 6 hours - can you please assign to someone? – Alex Brown Jan 16 '14 at 05:14
  • 1
    Have I got 16 hours left? I'll try the answers back tomorrow in the office in 12 hours time. – 719016 Jan 16 '14 at 19:24

8 Answers8

139

to paraphrase (and to simplify to the case of 2 inputs), your problem is that:

runApp(list(
    ui = bootstrapPage(
        textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0),
        textInput(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5)
    ),
    server = function(input, output) {}
))

shows

enter image description here

But you want side-by-side small inputs, like so:

small row

The short answer

textInputRow<-function (inputId, label, value = "") 
{
    div(style="display:inline-block",
        tags$label(label, `for` = inputId), 
        tags$input(id = inputId, type = "text", value = value,class="input-small"))
}
runApp(list(
    ui = bootstrapPage(
        textInputRow(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0),
        textInputRow(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5)
    ),
    server = function(input, output) {}
))

gives:

enter image description here

The long answer

Side-by-side inputs

Let's do side-by-side first:

Currently textInput generates two separate tags - the label, and the input, each of which is configured by CSS as display:block, which means it's a rectangle that will break to the left side of the container. We need to wrap each textInput's field in new container (div) and tell that container that the container that follows it (the next textInput) is allowed to be on the same horizontal row on the page, using CSS's display:inline-block.

So we add a div with a style around each textInput:

runApp(list(
    ui = bootstrapPage(
        div(style="display:inline-block",textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0)),
        div(style="display:inline-block",textInput(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5))
    ),
    server = function(input, output) {}
))

row

Small inputs

Now let's deal with small. There are a few ways to do small,

  1. make the font smaller,
  2. make the input box have fewer characters in it.
  3. tell css or (here) bootstrap to draw a smaller box

Since bootstrap.js is really in control of layout when we use shiny, only 3 will reliably work, so let's use that.

Input sizes are documented in Bootstrap 2.3.2's CSS Forms documentation, under 'Control Sizing'. It includes a variety of sizes from mini, small, medium, large, xlarge, and xxlarge, and the default is probably medium. Let's try small, instead.

To set the size, we need to change the class of the input tag generated by textInput.

Now textInput is just a convenience function around the more powerful tags functions such as tags$label and tags$input. We can build a more powerful version of textInput that allows us to configure the elements, specifically the class of the input node:

textInput2<-function (inputId, label, value = "",...) 
{
    tagList(tags$label(label, `for` = inputId), tags$input(id = inputId, 
                                                           type = "text", value = value,...))
}
runApp(list(
    ui = bootstrapPage(
        div(style="display:inline-block",textInput2(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0, class="input-small")),
        div(style="display:inline-block",textInput2(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5, class="input-small"))
    ),
    server = function(input, output) {}
))

small row

And we are done - but we can roll some of this functionality up by having textInput3 generate the div tag. It could also set the class by itself, but I'll leave that for you to write.

Wrapping it up

textInput3<-function (inputId, label, value = "",...) 
{
    div(style="display:inline-block",
        tags$label(label, `for` = inputId), 
        tags$input(id = inputId, type = "text", value = value,...))
}
runApp(list(
    ui = bootstrapPage(
        textInput3(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0, class="input-small"),
        textInput3(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5, class="input-small")
    ),
    server = function(input, output) {}
))

For interest's sake, here's the version using class input-mini:

enter image description here

Alex Brown
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120

Using Shiny (>= 0.11), you can accomplish this by putting the input calls within a splitLayout(). This will split the fluid row, box, etc. into the necessary columns required to show your input fields side-by-side.

The example below would give you three text inputs in a box, that will appear side-by-side in the fluidRow.

fluidRow(
  box(width = 12, title = "A Box in a Fluid Row I want to Split", 
      splitLayout(
        textInput("inputA", "The first input"),
        textInput("inputB", "The second input"),
        textInput("inputC", "The third input")
      )
  )
)
Nadir Sidi
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    +1, splitLayout also allows you to customize the width of each individual cell; splitLayout(cellWidths = c("25%", "75%"), plotOutput("plot1"), plotOutput("plot2") ) – ZN13 Mar 21 '17 at 10:07
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    This should be the accepted answer now, it's exactly what OP was after. – Joris Meys Mar 28 '17 at 17:45
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    And the function `box` is from the `shinydashboard` package – needRhelp Oct 31 '17 at 21:20
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    This is much easier than the accepted answer, thank you Nadir. – bob Aug 24 '20 at 15:02
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    This places the input in a scrollable column, so when you click for dropdown it does not render is intended and the input and dropdown elements scroll up and down. – geotheory Oct 13 '21 at 07:25
  • I am not sure I completely follow, but I believe the behavior your describing can be controlled by your CSS. If you're seeing unexpected rendering, I would play around with your styles. – Nadir Sidi Oct 13 '21 at 19:00
  • is it possible to control the cell heights? – Ben Apr 12 '22 at 14:51
53

Maybe this solution wasn't around in 2013 but if you want to do this without writing HTML or CSS you can just use the column function within a fluidRow like so:

  fluidRow(
    column(3,
    selectInput('pcat', 'Primary Category', c("ALL", "Some"))),
    column(3,
    selectInput('smodel', 'Statistical Model', c("NONE", "LINEAR REGRESSION", "LOWESS")))
  )

And it will place things side by side.

EDIT: Now there is another very easy way to do this using the splitLayout() function. See Nadir Sidi's answer for more details.

C W
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    Thanks! This saved me some big headache, luckily I scrolled down the answers, this is most likely the best way of doing this. – nico Oct 11 '16 at 15:45
  • I like this solution as well. splitLayout introduces scroll bars if you have drop down menues, which makes it for this type of inputs quite insufficient. But with column this works great! – JReddig Jun 07 '19 at 12:25
8

I deleted the old answer - here is one that works:

ui.r:

library(shiny)
shinyUI(
  pageWithSidebar(
  # application title
  headerPanel("test01"),
  sidebarPanel(
     tags$head(
        tags$style(type="text/css", "select { max-width: 360px; }"),
        tags$style(type="text/css", ".span4 { max-width: 360px; }"),
        tags$style(type="text/css",  ".well { max-width: 360px; }")
      ),
     wellPanel(
        p(strong("Side Panel:"))
     )
  ),

 mainPanel(

    div(id="XXmin",textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0)),
    tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "#XXmin {display: inline-block}")),
    tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "#xlimitsmin {max-width: 50px}")),

    div(id="XXmax",textInput(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5)),
    tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "#XXmax {display: inline-block}"),
    tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "#xlimitsmax {max-width: 50px}"))

  ))
))

Here are the changes I made:

1) I eliminated the select from select#xlimitsmax and select#xlimitsmin in your .css statements

2) I put your two controls each in their own div() and gave them the names XXmin and XXmax. I then added .css statements to make them inline-block.

If you have a bunch of these you might want to use a class statement - such as:

div(class="MyClass",textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0)),
tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", ".MyClass {display: inline-block}")),
tags$head(tags$style(type="text/css", "#xlimitsmin {max-width: 50px}")),

then you can tag each of the control div()'s as class="MyClass" and use only one .css statement.

Edited to add: Thanks for posting the example code - that made it much easier.

2nd Edit: Just to clarify. The point of putting the textInput commands inside a div() is to unite the input box and its label into a single object so that styles (in this case the display style) can be applied. If you don't do this, the label and the box act as two separate entities and it is harder to manipulate them in cases like this.

John Paul
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8

As an alternative to putting verbose style declarations in a class, it seems you can easily extend the shiny tags functions to your liking. This particular one would be convenient to have around by default. (this is with shiny shiny_0.14.1 ). Thought I was going to need to write a closure but this seems to work.

inline = function (x) {
tags$div(style="display:inline-block;", x)
}

inline(textInput(inputId="xlimitsmin", label="x-min", value = 0.0)),
inline(textInput(inputId="xlimitsmax", label="x-max", value = 0.5)),
inline(textInput(inputId="ylimitsmin", label="y-min", value = 0.5)),
inline(textInput(inputId="ylimitsmax", label="y-max", value = 1.0)),
Nathan Siemers
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4

I wasn't happy with splitLayout() because it introduces scroll bars when space is limited.

I found that, at least for input widgets like buttons or text boxes, a quite easy solution with better responsive behaviour is using flex-box: (see this great guide: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/)

div(
  style = "display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;",
  div(
    style = "flex: 1;",
    textInput("inputA", "The first input")
  ),
  div(
    style = "flex: 1;",
    textInput("inputB", "The second input")
  ),
  div(
    style = "flex: 1;",
    textInput("inputC", "The third input")
  )
)

It is possible to adjust relative widths. Corresponding to splitLayout(cellWidths = c("25%", "75%"), ...):

div(
  style = "display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;",
  div(
    style = "flex: 1;",
    textInput("inputA", "The first input")
  ),
  div(
    style = "flex: 3;", # second item 3 times as wide as first one
    textInput("inputB", "The second input")
  )
)
sgrubsmyon
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3

If you want the inputs in mainPanel you can use the following:

div(class="row-fluid",
  div(class="span1",textInput("xlimitsmin", label = "x-min", value = 0.0)), 
  div(class="span1",textInput("xlimitsmax", label = "x-max", value = 0.5)),
  div(class="span1",textInput("ylimitsmin", label = "y-min", value = 0.5)),
  div(class="span1",textInput("ylimitsmax", label = "y-max", value = 1.0))
)

Add:

#xlimitsmin, #xlimitsmax, #ylimitsmin, #ylimitsmax { 
    max-width: 25px; 
}

in a css file (e.g., style.css in the www/ directory) in your app and source it from ui.R with:

includeCSS('www/style.R')

I am not sure why you need a textInput rather than a numericInput since the input you seem to be looking for is numeric. If you choose numericInput you can simply replace textInput with numericInput in the above. If you want the inputs in the sidebarPanel you could use the code below. The same css file mentioned above would be needed.

div(class="row-fluid",
    div(class="span3",numericInput("xlimitsmin", label = "x-min", value = 0.0)), 
    div(class="span3",numericInput("xlimitsmax", label = "x-max", value = 0.5)),
    div(class="span3",numericInput("ylimitsmin", label = "y-min", value = 0.5)),
    div(class="span3",numericInput("ylimitsmax", label = "y-max", value = 1.0))
)
Vincent
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3

Sgrubsmyon's approach was almost perfect for me however I ran into a new problem with the flex-box approach in that there was no padding between the inputs. Apparently this has something to do with "display: flex" being a wrapper for "flex-grow 1" which uses up all available space. I dove into the rabbit hole and couldnt get this to work but learnt about a similar approach which uses "CSS - Grid" and is even easier (relevant SO question where I learnt this from):

div(
  style = "display: grid; 
          grid-template-columns: 20% repeat(3, 20%); ## same as repeat(4, 20%)
          grid-gap: 10px;",

    textInput("inputA", "The first input"),

    textInput("inputB", "The second input"),

    textInput("inputC", "The third input"),

    textInput("inputD", "The fourth input")

)

A similar great guide exists for the CSS - Grid approach located here where you can learn about all the different arguments and customisability that you can use. Note that I have never touched CSS until 2 hours before writing this answer so any corrections are welcome =)

Maharero
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