How can I use the searchPanes extension and server-side processing in my R Shiny app? - shiny

Question

I've been able to create a working Shiny app with the datatables searchPanes extension. The problem is that my table is huge, which makes searchPanes go too slow; plus I have the cascadePanes option turned on, which slows down my table row filtering even more. Currently the data processing is done on the client side but I have read that it is more efficient on the server side, therefore I would like to change the configuration of my app to work on the server side.
This link on the datatables website explains how to configure searchPanes with server processing, but I don't know how to apply this information to my shiny application.
I attach a minimal example of my application with the iris data:
library(shiny)
library(DT)
ui <- fluidPage(
DTOutput("table")
)
server <- function(input, output) {
output$table <- renderDT({
datatable(
iris,
class = 'white-space: nowrap cell-border',
extensions = c("SearchPanes", "Select", "Buttons", "Scroller"),
selection = "none", rownames = F, filter = "none",
options = list(
select = "multiple",
scrollY = "497px", scrollCollapse = TRUE, searching = TRUE,
scrollX = FALSE, autoWidth = FALSE,
info = TRUE,
paging = TRUE,
dom = "Brtip",
buttons = list(
# searchPanes button
list(
extend="searchPanes",
config = list(cascadePanes = T,combiner="and")
),
# clear filters button
list(
extend="searchPanes",
text="clear filters",
action=JS(
"function(e, table, node, config){",
" table.searchPanes.clearSelections();",
"}"
)
),
# select all rows
list(
extend='selectAll',
className='selectAll',
text="select all",
action = JS(
"function(e, table, node, config) {",
" table.rows({ search: 'applied'}).deselect();",
" table.rows({ search: 'applied'}).select();",
"}"
)
),
# deselect all rows
"selectNone",
# page length button
"pageLength"
),
language = list(
# show number of active filters in button text
searchPanes = list(collapse = paste("Filter rows: ",'Filters Selected - %d'))
)
)
)
},server = F)
}
shinyApp(ui, server)
I have read this post where the user Kraggle uses the function dataTableProxy() from the DT package, but I don't know how to capture the button input from searchpanes since I have defined it inside a custom button.