Sometimes it's nice to be able to support navigation within a Shiny app, especially when there are multiple tabs or some other form of "multiple pages" in a Shiny app. Since Shiny apps are a single page, the browser nagivation buttons (previous/next page) don't work when "navigating" within a Shiny app. You also can't bookmark a certain "page" in a Shiny app - every time you go to an app, you will be shown the initial state of the app.
This app shows a basic demonstration of how to implement a way to navigate a Shiny app by manually changing the URL when different tabs are loaded, and using the current URL to decide what to show when a new page is loaded. In this app, every time you click on a new tab, the browser will behave as if you navigated to a new page, and you will be able to go back and forward using the browser navigation buttons. Another nice feature is that after navigating to a certain tab, you can copy the URL or bookmark it, and when you open that page again, the Shiny app will restore the state of the app.
For example, try this sequence of events to see what this app can do:
- load the app
- type some text into the search box in the Home tab
- click on "Search" (you will be redirected to the Search tab)
- click on the "About" tab
- click the "back" button in your browser navigation
- copy the URL
- click the "next" button in your browser navigation
- in a different window, go to the URL that you copied earlier (it will automatically navigate to the search page and show the search term)
The code is a bit complex and might take some time to understand how it works. This is certainly not an ideal solution, I'd love to know if someone has a nicer method for navigating a Shiny app. It's possible that the core Shiny team will work on this and that soon this functionality will be native to shiny.
This example makes use of the shinyjs package to call custom JavaScript functions.
