How do I access the date from an rShiny dateInput? - shiny

Question

I am trying to write an input page that takes the date of a section's last training, then calculates the currency of that training (how many days since), but I seem to be having a problem accessing the date from the dateInput element. I'm currently just trying to get it to print, but it is eluding me. Is there something I'm missing, or how can I get this to work? I've commented out the code to (hopefully) calculate the date gap, as I haven't had a date to work through that just yet. If you see an issue there, I'd appreciate that pointer as well.
Thank you!
library(shiny)
ui <- fluidPage(
tags$h3("Section Training"),
dateInput("section_Last_Training",
"When was your last training course?",
daysofweekdisabled = c(0, 6),
max = Sys.Date()
),
)
server <- function(input, output, session) {
section_Last_Training <- reactive({
# dateGap = as.character(difftime(Sys.time(), input$section_Last_Training, units = "days"))
print(input$section_Last_Training)
})
}
shinyApp(ui, server)

Answer 1

It is working, just make sure the last value in reactive is the value you want to assign to the reactive. You can do print, but do it before your gap calculation. Another thing is reactive is "lazily" evaluated. It means if there is no downstream reactivity requires it, it will not be calculated. So you need to add some events that require this reactive to make it work. See the code below.
library(shiny)
ui <- fluidPage(
tags$h3("Section Training"),
dateInput("section_Last_Training",
"When was your last training course?",
daysofweekdisabled = c(0, 6),
max = Sys.Date()
),
)
server <- function(input, output, session) {
section_Last_Training <- reactive({
print(input$section_Last_Training)
as.character(difftime(Sys.time(), input$section_Last_Training, units = "days"))
})
observe(print(section_Last_Training()))
}
shinyApp(ui, server)