In editbl: 'DT' Extension for CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) Applications in 'shiny'

Sometimes you do not want to give a user access to the entire dataset. You can either hide rows or give read-only access.

Hide rows completely

In this example we only allow user Mickey to see his own row.

We simply can use dplyr::filter() on the table. Note that this is most useful if you combine this with backends that support in_place editing. E.g. you can retrieve only a subset of rows from a database and specifically modify those. Take a look at the 'relational database' vignettes for more information on how to work with a database.

library(editbl)
library(shiny)
conn <- DBI::dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite(), "")
df <- data.frame(
    user = c("Albert","Donald","Mickey"),
    email = c('[e-mail]', '[e-mail]', '[e-mail]')
)
DBI::dbWriteTable(conn, "characters", df)
tibble <- dplyr::tbl(conn, 'characters')

CURRENT_USER = 'Mickey'

shiny::shinyApp( 
    ui = editbl::eDTOutput('id'),
    server =  function(input, output,session){
      result <- eDT(id='id',
        data = tibble %>% filter(user == CURRENT_USER),
        in_place = TRUE
      )
    })

print(tibble)

DBI::dbDisconnect(conn)

Read-only access

In this example we only allow user Mickey to modify his own row. In contrast to the previous example, he can still read data from others.

The arguments canEditRow and canDeleteRow can be used to specify logic describing if modfications are allowed. The passed on logic shoud be a function with the argument row. This is a single row of the displayed table in datatype tibble.

library(editbl)
df <- tibble::tibble(
    user = c("Albert","Donald","Mickey"),
    email = c('[e-mail]', '[e-mail]', '[e-mail]')
)

CURRENT_USER = 'Mickey'

rowModificationLogic <- function(row){
        if (row[,'user'] == CURRENT_USER){
          TRUE
        } else {
          FALSE  
        }
    }

shiny::shinyApp( 
    ui = editbl::eDTOutput('id'),
    server =  function(input, output,session){
      eDT(id='id',
        data = df,
        canEditRow = rowModificationLogic,
        canDeleteRow = rowModificationLogic
        )
    })

editbl documentation built on April 3, 2025, 6:21 p.m.