Hide certain columns in a responsive data table using DT package

Question

I am trying to create a responsive data table for my shiny application using DT package. I want to hide certain columns in advance. For example:

library("shiny")
library("DT")
shinyApp(
  ui = fluidPage(DT::dataTableOutput('tbl')),
  server = function(input, output) {
    output$tbl = DT::renderDataTable(
      iris,extensions="Responsive"
    )
  }
)

This output gives me 5 columns. It only hides columns when I narrow the page. But, I want to hide last 3 columns in advance and I just want to see first two columns every time. Is there a way to do that?

Update:

Example output

Mayfield

Answer 1

You can hide columns in your table using DT options or extensions.

If you want them to be hidden in advance but have a button to make them visible again, the ColVis extension should work well for you: link

If you just want thme stay hidden, add the following option (can't remember where I've seen its documentation right now..)

options=list(columnDefs = list(list(visible=FALSE, targets=columns2hide)))

Plastic

is it possible to use ColVis to hide some of the columns by default and once the user checks the box display them? – Brecher

Third section on the posted link mixed with the code above should do the trick. – Plastic

Note that when you fill in colmuns2hide you should but in the column number. Not sure if you can put in the column name. – Bluet

you can’t, you have to do match(columns2hide, colnames(iris)), maybe with a na.omit wrapped around it if columns2hide could contain a column not available in the data – Mccann

Note that DT's column index seems to start at 0, not 1, so it's match(columns2hide, colnames(iris))-1L. – Gyp

hiding columns with columnDefs = list(list(visible=FALSE, targets=columns2hide) seems to be unstable. Any feedback from heavy users? – Farfamed

The column index can catch you off guard. It start from 0 but row name is counted as column 0. So the index depend on if you enabled row names. – Truda

I am trying to make the same thing work but am having issues. I am not sure what I should pass to targets. The data that is being rendered is a reactive object named "dataInput". I would like to hide multiple columns – Sanctimonious

Answer 2

I have another way which I like for its readability. It does not solve the problem of column numbering though.

library("shiny")
library("DT")
library(magrittr)
columns2hide <- match('Sepal.Width', colnames(iris))
shinyApp(
  ui = fluidPage(DT::dataTableOutput('tbl')),
  server = function(input, output) {
    output$tbl = DT::renderDataTable(
      {
        dataTableProxy(outputId = 'tbl') %>%
          hideCols(hide = columns2hide)
        iris
      },
      extensions="Responsive"
    )
  }
)

dataTableProxy creates a proxy object that you can operate on with a couple of functions (see ?dataTableProxy). It can be handy for hiding/showing/selecting/add/... rows and columns of the table when clicking on a button, for example. Because it has deferUntilFlush = TRUE by default it waits with its handling of the table until its next generation. In this case this simply happens on the following line.

Sweetmeat

Answer 3

options=list(columnDefs = list(list(visible=FALSE, targets=columns2hide)))

colums2hide <- c('col_name_1','col_name_2')

This is how to do it with specifying column names vs column numbers.

Denicedenie