shiny: open new browser tab from within shiny app

Question

From within shiny I want to open a HTML page in a new browser tab. Here it is pointed out that I need JS for that task. Let\'s say I want to open the URL http://www.google.com

Answer 1

I was having a problem similar to this so I thought I would add my solution.

I wanted to have links in the tabPanel but Shiny will open a new blank page and have a link instead of just clicking on the tabPanel and opening a new page. Using the standard bootstrap CSS the workaround is to use the navbarMenu and then put the links in the tabPanel.

navbarMenu("Links",
           tabPanel(
               a("Google", href="https://google.com", target="_blank")
           )

Answer 2

I have the same problem and have come to the following solution. It's a bit of a workaround but it still works. @MarkHeckmann: To start a new BrowserTab from a running Shiny App I use an action button which triggers the function browseURL(...)

library(shiny)
ui <- fluidPage(
  titlePanel("Browser test"),
    sidebarLayout(
      sidebarPanel(
        shiny::actionButton(inputId = "gen_report", label = "Generate Report")
     ),
     mainPanel(   )
  ))

server <- function(input, output) {
observeEvent(input$gen_report,{
    browseURL("https://www.r-project.org")
})
}

shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

@RickTastic: This procedure also works with self generated HTML reports. By listing an html page instead of a web address. browseURL("test.dashboard.html") or browseURL("path to html file")

Answer 3

You shouldn't need anything more fancy than traditional, shiny-ified HTML:

a("test", href="http://google.com", target="_blank")  

You're just looking to set the target attribute on the a tag which tells your browser where to open this new link you created.