Using extensions = 'Responsive' slows typing into search field

[chrlaney]

This is a really wonderful package - thank you! The only problem I have run in so far is that if I add extensions = 'Responsive', I can no longer type characters into the search field at a normal rate - is very slow. I am only an R programmer (and not a great one at that) so any suggestions you might have would be great. Thanks!

[yihui]

Could you give a reproducible example? I do not see such a problem on this example page: http://rstudio.github.io/DT/extensions.html

[chrlaney]

Thanks for your response! Here are links to the app (see the Filtered Table tab) without responsive: https://claney.shinyapps.io/dataAvailabilityApp/ - and with responsive: https://claney.shinyapps.io/neonDataAvailability-responsive/. The code in server.R is only different in that extensions = 'Scroller' in the first, and extensions = c('Scroller', 'Responsive') in the second. The full code for the shiny app is in a private repo but here is the code I use to render the filtered table:

  output$filtertable <- DT::renderDataTable(
    DT::datatable(dp2, rownames = FALSE, extensions = c('Scroller','Responsive'),
                  options = list(pageLength = 200, 
                                 pagingType = "full_numbers",
                                 deferRender = TRUE,
                                 dom = 'frtiSp',
                                 order = list(list(0, 'asc'), list(2, 'asc')),
                                 tableTools = list(sSwfPath = copySWF()),
                                 scrollY = 400,
                                 scrollCollapse = TRUE
                                 )))

If you need more than this, I can send you code privately.

[yihui]

Yes, I can see the second app is slower when I type in the search box, but it is not too bad. I guess the delay is on the magnitude of ~300 milliseconds. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I won't be able to help you with this particular issue, since I'm not the author of the Responsive extension, and I do not know how to make it faster. Is there a reason that you want to use this extension?

[chrlaney]

It is nice for viewing the table on small screens, like phones, but of course there the delay is even more noticeable, on the order of a second per letter. It is more important that the users can quickly filter the table via search terms than see a condensed table, so for now I will not use the responsive functionality. Perhaps I can drop the extension author a line. Thank you for your help!

[yihui]

That will be nice. Thanks for your understanding!

[vasiliosz]

This may be a DT issue after all.
In my Shiny app, I'm seeing this behavior with DT::renderDataTable and DT::datatable and responsive turned on - about 1s per letter in >2000 entry table on MBPro i7 16gb locally.

Duplicating the table but rendering it with shiny::renderDataTable on the same page - there is no delay in searching. And responsive is turned on via the options list instead, as seen below.

And there is actually a (very) slight delay in searching the DT table compared to the shiny table even without the responsive setting.

Since I'm not loading a separate dataTables.responsive.js they're presumably using the same JS library.
Unfortunately, I can't share the full app. The relevant code from server.R:

output$full_table <- DT::renderDataTable({
  data <- data_full()
  ...
  DT::datatable(data,
                  class="table table-striped table-hover table-condensed",
                  rownames = FALSE,
                  escape = FALSE,
                  filter = "bottom",
                  extensions = c('ColReorder','Responsive'),
                  options = list(
                    "pageLength" = 10,
                    dom = 'Rlfrtip')
                  )
  })

output$full_table2 <- shiny::renderDataTable({
  data <- data_full()
  ...
  data
}, options = list(
  "orderClasses" = FALSE,
  "autoWidth" = FALSE,
  "responsive" = TRUE,
  "pageLength" = 10,
  "paging" = TRUE),
"escape" = FALSE
)

[yihui]

@vasiliosz That is a different case. Shiny uses server-side processing by default, and DT uses client-side processing by default. Please see

• http://rstudio.github.io/DT/server.html
• http://rstudio.github.io/DT/shiny.html

[vasiliosz]

Thanks @yihui. My oversight, it works as expected.