CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rshinyhtmlwidgets
OganM
OganM

Reputation: 2663

developing htmlwidgets with devtools

I am on a windows 10 machine. Trying to experiment with htmlwidget development.

To test things out, I have a local clone of the sigma package, which is the example provided in the htmlwidgets tutorials.

Based on this post, I am lead to believe that devtools would work fine with htmlwidgets. However if I do

library(devtools)
load_all()
sigma(system.file("examples/ediaspora.gexf.xml", package = "sigma"))

The resulting widget is blank. If I examine the html code of the output, I see that the required javascript files for sigma is not loaded.

However if I do

library(devtools)
install()
library(sigma)
sigma(system.file("examples/ediaspora.gexf.xml", package = "sigma"))

I get the network. Examining the html of the output reveals that the required javascript files are loaded this time.

Am I supposed to be installing the package I am developing to be able to test it out? Is there a way to work around this behaviour?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 158

Answers (1)

greg L
greg L

Reputation: 4124

From reading the solution in that post, devtools works with htmlwidgets if you use one of two workarounds (just summarizing them here):

  1. Use devtools::load_all() on the htmlwidgets package, and then load_all() your widget package. This would require you to have the htmlwidgets source somewhere locally. For example, clone the https://github.com/ramnathv/htmlwidgets repo to ~/htmlwidgets, and then run devtools::load_all("~/htmlwidgets").

  2. Run this code to shim system.file for htmlwidgets, and then load_all() your widget package: https://gist.github.com/wch/c942335660dc6c96322f

shim_system_file <- function(package) {
  imports <- parent.env(asNamespace(package))
  pkgload:::unlock_environment(imports)
  imports$system.file <- pkgload:::shim_system.file
}

shim_system_file("htmlwidgets")
shim_system_file("htmltools")

Of the two, I'd probably use the second since it's easier, maybe place it in a .Rprofile to have it run at the start of every R session.

I've just learned there's an even easier solution though. The development versions of htmlwidgets and htmltools have system.file shims built-in now, so load_all() just works: https://github.com/ramnathv/htmlwidgets/pull/340. You can install the dev version of both like:

devtools::install_github("ramnathv/htmlwidgets")

And then just load_all() your widget package as usual without further workarounds.

Upvotes: 1

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