Why selection is disabled when creating datatable outside shiny?

[bartekch]

I've noticed that if datatable is created outside Shiny environment, selection is completely ignored, thanks to inShiny() call. I'm wondering what is the motivation behind this, because I was a bit surprised by this. In particular in the following example I would expect default selection mode to be working, but it's not.

library(shiny)
library(DT)
dt_outside <- DT::datatable(mtcars)
shinyApp(
    ui = basicPage(DT::DTOutput("dt")),
    server = function(input, output) {
        output$dt <- DT::renderDT(dt_outside)
    }
)

I don't see any specific reason why it is so, and I feel that sometimes it could be useful (for the record - I don't have real use case, I noticed it by accident while experimenting with some other features). Ot maybe you are not supposed to use it like that?

Session info

─ Session info ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.2.2 (2022-10-31 ucrt)
 os       Windows 10 x64 (build 22621)
 system   x86_64, mingw32
 ui       Rgui
 language (EN)
 collate  Polish_Poland.utf8
 ctype    Polish_Poland.utf8
 tz       Europe/Warsaw
 date     2023-01-02
 pandoc   NA

─ Packages ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package     * version date (UTC) lib source
 bslib         0.4.2   2022-12-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 cachem        1.0.6   2021-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 callr         3.7.3   2022-11-02 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 cli           3.5.0   2022-12-20 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 crayon        1.5.2   2022-09-29 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 crosstalk     1.2.0   2021-11-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 devtools      2.4.5   2022-10-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 digest        0.6.31  2022-12-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 DT          * 0.26    2022-10-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 ellipsis      0.3.2   2021-04-29 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 fastmap       1.1.0   2021-01-25 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 fs            1.5.2   2021-12-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 glue          1.6.2   2022-02-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 htmltools     0.5.4   2022-12-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 htmlwidgets   1.6.0   2022-12-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 httpuv        1.6.7   2022-12-14 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 jquerylib     0.1.4   2021-04-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 jsonlite      1.8.4   2022-12-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 later         1.3.0   2021-08-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 lifecycle     1.0.3   2022-10-07 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 magrittr      2.0.3   2022-03-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 memoise       2.0.1   2021-11-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 mime          0.12    2021-09-28 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.0)
 miniUI        0.1.1.1 2018-05-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 pkgbuild      1.4.0   2022-11-27 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 pkgload       1.3.2   2022-11-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 prettyunits   1.1.1   2020-01-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 processx      3.8.0   2022-10-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 profvis       0.3.7   2020-11-02 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 promises      1.2.0.1 2021-02-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 ps            1.7.2   2022-10-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 purrr         1.0.0   2022-12-20 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 R6            2.5.1   2021-08-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 Rcpp          1.0.9   2022-07-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 remotes       2.4.2   2021-11-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 rlang         1.0.6   2022-09-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 sass          0.4.4   2022-11-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 sessioninfo   1.2.2   2021-12-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 shiny       * 1.7.4   2022-12-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 stringi       1.7.8   2022-07-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.1)
 stringr       1.5.0   2022-12-02 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 urlchecker    1.0.1   2021-11-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 usethis       2.1.6   2022-05-25 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 vctrs         0.5.1   2022-11-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 xtable        1.8-4   2019-04-21 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)
 yaml          2.3.6   2022-10-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.2.2)

 [1] C:/Users/bartosz.chrol/AppData/Local/R/win-library/4.2
 [2] C:/Program Files/R/R-4.2.2/library

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[yihui]

You can set options(DT.datatable.shiny = TRUE to bypass the inShiny() check.

I think the original rationale was that you can't do anything meaningful with the selections without Shiny (or crosstalk). The only possible use case I can think of is to highlight certain parts of a table.

The example you provided is indeed surprising. Our inShiny() check may be too strict. I'll soften it in a minute. Thanks!

[bartekch]

Yes, highlighting may be useful, perhaps for some presentation purposes.

Thanks for the quick fix, I could confirm it's working :)