Externally link to specific tabPanel in Shiny App

Question

It\'s possible to use anchor links in flat Shiny apps relatively easily - https://stackoverflow.com/a/28605517/1659890.

However, is it possible for an external link

Answer 1

I found the other answer a little difficult to follow so I created the example below. To navigate to the Data Availability tab, place "?a=b" to at the end of your url. For example if hosting the app on port 7436 the following link will take you directly to the Data Availability page. http://127.0.0.1:7436/?a=b

library(shinydashboard)
library(shiny)
ui <- dashboardPage(
  dashboardHeader(),
  dashboardSidebar(
    sidebarMenu(id = "container",
      menuItem("Channels", tabName = "lt_channels"),
      menuItem("Data Availability", tabName = "data_avail")
    )),
  dashboardBody(
    tabItems(
      tabItem(tabName = "lt_channels",
              h1("Test Fail")),
      tabItem(tabName = "data_avail",
              h1("Test Pass"))
    )
  )
)



server <- function(session, input, output){
  observe({
    query <- parseQueryString(session$clientData$url_search)
    query1 <- paste(names(query), query, sep = "=", collapse=", ")
    print(query1)
    if(query1 == "a=b"){
      updateTabItems(session, inputId = "container", selected = "data_avail")
    }
  })
}
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Answer 2

You could add a search query parameter to the URL (eg. href='www.myapp.com?tab=tab2), and in the app that is being linked you would have to add a bit of logic that changes to a specified tab on initialization if the search string is present (eg. look at session$clientData$url_search and if it exists and there's a tab variable, then use updateTabsetPanel() to go to that tab)