Pasting multiple items into selectizeInput

[b-dawes]

I'm building an application which uses selectize inputs with multiple = TRUE. I was looking for a way to allow users to paste in a comma separated list of items instead of having to enter each one in individually. It looks like selectize.js supports this as of version 0.12.0 (see here).

Is there a way to do this in Shiny? I tried setting both delimiter and splitOn in options but neither seemed to have any effect.

[corinnend]

Hello - were you able to find a solution? I'm running into the same issue.

[wch]

It looks like you have to add a create function, like so:

shinyApp(
  ui = fluidPage(
    selectizeInput("x", "Choose:",
      letters,
      multiple = TRUE,
      options = list(
        delimiter = ',',
        create = I("function(input, callback){
          return {
            value: input,
            text: input
           };
        }")
      )
    )
  ),
  server = function(input, output) { }
)
# Copy and paste a,b,c,d

I found this by trying it with just Javascript here: https://jsfiddle.net/winstonchang/462qjrru/1/

Note that this will also attempt to create entries that don't exist. That's how the delimiter option works, according to https://github.com/selectize/selectize.js/blob/master/docs/usage.md.

Instead of delimiter, you can pass a regular expression to splitOn: https://jsfiddle.net/winstonchang/462qjrru/3/

However, to get it from R to Javascript takes a little more work - you can't pass a Javascript regex directly, but you can pass an immediately-invoked function that returns a regex.

shinyApp(
  ui = fluidPage(
    selectizeInput("x", "Choose:",
      letters,
      multiple = TRUE,
      options = list(
        splitOn = I("(function() { return /[,;]/; })()"),
        create = I("function(input, callback){
          return {
            value: input,
            text: input
           };
        }")
      )
    )
  ),
  server = function(input, output) {
  }
)

# Copy and paste 1,2,3,4,5;6;7

[saif003]

@wch This, fails if you try entering case sensitive characters, try entering 'a,b,c,d' to this fiddle.

[JacobBumgarner]

Here is an example of built off of @wch's solution that allows paste input to selectize dropdowns, but this version only accepts values that are present in the options list.

shinyApp(
  ui = fluidPage(
    selectizeInput(
      "x",
      "Choose:",
      letters,
      multiple = TRUE,
      options = list(
        splitOn = I("(function() { return /[,; ]/; })()"),
        create = I("function(input, callback){
                   var selectize_options = $('#x')[0].selectize.options;
                   if (selectize_options[input] == undefined) {
                    return {};
                   } else {
                    return {value: input, label: input};
                   }}")
      )
    )
  ),
server = function(input, output, session) {
}
)

# example paste: a,1,b,2,c,3,d,xyz;f hello g