Packages

For this post, we need to load the following library:

# install it if never done it before
#install.packages("DT")

library(DT)

Dataset

For this post, we’ll use a dataset with different data types such as integer, numeric, factor, logical, and character.

df = data.frame(
  integer_col = as.integer(c(1, 2, 3)),             # Integer column
  numeric_col = c(1.1, 2.2, 3.3),                   # Numeric column
  factor_col = factor(c("level1", "level2", "level3")), # Factor column
  logical_col = c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE),                # Logical column
  character_col = c("a", "b", "c")                 # Character column
)

Filtering

By default, DT tables have no filters. However, the datatable() function has a filter argument with very useful properties, depending on the type of data.

Integer and numeric columns have range sliders, while other variables have a choice of all possible values.

Keep in mind: make sure your variables have the right type so that the filters match. You may need to manually change the type of some of your columns.

table = datatable(df,
                  filter = 'top') # put it at the top of the table

# save widget
library(htmltools)
saveWidget(table, file="HtmlWidget/dt-filtering.html")

Captioning

Thanks to the caption argument, we can easily add a caption to our table.

table = datatable(
  df,
  caption = tags$caption(style = 'caption-side: bottom; text-align: center;',
                         'Table 1: ',
                         em('This is a legend that you can customize')
                         )
  )

# save widget
library(htmltools)
saveWidget(table, file="HtmlWidget/dt-captioning.html")

Editing

The cells can be edited directly into the table by double clicking on it, changing the value and then clicking outside. It’s also possible to make only specific as editable.

In the case you want all cells to be editable, put editable='cell' in the datatable() function. Otherwise, put a list in argument of the editable argument like in the example below that allows editing in column 1, 3 and 5, for all rows:

table = datatable(df,
                  editable = list(target = 'row',
                                  disable = list(columns = c(1, 3, 5))))

# save widget
library(htmltools)
saveWidget(table, file="HtmlWidget/dt-editing.html")

All in once

Here’s what the output looks like when we put all together the features we’ve seen before:

df = rbind(df, df, df) # add more rows
table = datatable(df,
                  editable = list(target = 'row',
                                  disable = list(columns = c(1, 3, 5))),
                  caption = tags$caption(style = 'caption-side: bottom; text-align: center;',
                                         'Table 1: ',
                                         em('This is a legend that you can customize')),
                  filter = 'top')

# save widget
library(htmltools)
saveWidget(table, file="HtmlWidget/dt-all-features.html")

Conclusion

This post explained how to add a filter parameter, a caption and edit cells in DT table. For more of this package, see the dedicated section or the table section.

Related chart types

Line plot

Area

Stacked area

Streamchart

Time Series

Contact

This document is a work by Yan Holtz. Any feedback is highly encouraged. You can fill an issue on Github, drop me a message on Twitter, or send an email pasting yan.holtz.data with gmail.com.

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