input_task_button: Button for launching longer-running operations

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Button for launching longer-running operations

Description

input_task_button is a button that can be used in conjuction with shiny::bindEvent() (or the older shiny::eventReactive() and shiny::observeEvent() functions) to trigger actions or recomputation.

It is similar to shiny::actionButton(), except it prevents the user from clicking when its operation is already in progress.

Upon click, it automatically displays a customizable progress message and disables itself; and after the server has dealt with whatever reactivity is triggered from the click, the button automatically reverts to its original appearance and re-enables itself.

Usage

input_task_button(
  id,
  label,
  ...,
  icon = NULL,
  label_busy = "Processing...",
  icon_busy = rlang::missing_arg(),
  type = "primary",
  auto_reset = TRUE
)

update_task_button(id, ..., state = NULL, session = get_current_session())

Arguments

id	The input slot that will be used to access the value.
label	The label of the button while it is in ready (clickable) state; usually a string.
...	In input_task_button(), named arguments become attributes to include on the ⁠<button>⁠ element, e.g. class or data attributes. Unnamed arguments can provide additional states for the button, see the "Custom states" section. In update_task_button(), ... are ignored and must be empty. The task button only supports changing between pre-defined states.
icon	An optional icon to display next to the label while the button is in ready state. See fontawesome::fa_i().
label_busy	The label of the button while it is busy.
icon_busy	The icon to display while the button is busy. By default, fontawesome::fa_i("refresh", class = "fa-spin", "aria-hidden" = "true") is used, which displays a spinning "chasing arrows" icon. You can create spinning icons out of other Font Awesome icons by using the same expression, but replacing "refresh" with a different icon name. See fontawesome::fa_i().
type	One of the Bootstrap theme colors ("primary", "default", "secondary", "success", "danger", "warning", "info", "light", "dark"), or NULL to leave off the Bootstrap-specific button CSS classes altogether.
auto_reset	If TRUE (the default), automatically put the button back in "ready" state after its click is handled by the server.
state	If "busy", put the button into busy/disabled state. If "ready", put the button into ready/enabled state.
session	The session object; using the default is recommended.

Manual button reset

In some advanced use cases, it may be necessary to keep a task button in its busy state even after the normal reactive processing has completed. Calling update_task_button(id, state = "busy") from the server will opt out of any currently pending reset for a specific task button. After doing so, the button can be re-enabled by calling update_task_button(id, state = "ready") after each click's work is complete.

You can also pass an explicit auto_reset = FALSE to input_task_button(), which means that button will never be automatically re-enabled and will require update_task_button(id, state = "ready") to be called each time.

Note that, as a general rule, Shiny's update family of functions do not take effect at the instant that they are called, but are held until the end of the current reactive cycle. So if you have many different reactive calculations and outputs, you don't have to be too careful about when you call update_task_button(id, state = "ready"), as the button on the client will not actually re-enable until the same moment that all of the updated outputs simultaneously sent to the client.

Custom states

The task button is designed to automatically switch between two states: the "ready" state, where the button is clickable and displays the label and icon; and the "busy" state, where the button is disabled and displays label_busy and icon_busy.

In advanced use cases, you can include additional states by adding an htmltools::div() with a slot attribute naming the state and the icon and label as the first and second children, respectively.

input_task_button(
  label = "Ring home",
  icon = fontawesome::fa_i("phone"),
  div(slot = "ringing", fontawesome::fa_i("bell"), "Ringing..."),
  div(
    slot = "voice-mail",
    fontawesome::fa_i("voicemail"),
    "Leaving a message..."
  )
)

You can move between these states by calling update_task_button() and passing the slot name to the state argument, e.g. state="ringing". See the section above on manual button resetting, which you will likely need to use in conjunction with custom states.

Server value

An integer of class "shinyActionButtonValue". This class differs from ordinary integers in that a value of 0 is considered "falsy". This implies two things:

• Event handlers (e.g., shiny::observeEvent(), shiny::eventReactive()) won't execute on initial load.

• Input validation (e.g., shiny::req(), shiny::need()) will fail on initial load.

See Also

bind_task_button()

Examples

library(shiny)
library(bslib)

ui <- page_sidebar(
  sidebar = sidebar(
    open = "always",
    input_task_button("resample", "Resample"),
  ),
  verbatimTextOutput("summary")
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  sample <- eventReactive(input$resample, ignoreNULL=FALSE, {
    Sys.sleep(2)  # Make this artificially slow
    rnorm(100)
  })

  output$summary <- renderPrint({
    summary(sample())
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

bslib documentation built on May 16, 2026, 9:06 a.m.