Crosstool: A Generic Control Widget for Crosstalk

Create widgets that send control information, for example from sliders or other HTML elements ("transmitters"). Or make widgets that receive information from crosstalk apps ("receivers"). Transmitters and receivers use one-sided communication unlike most other crosstalk widgets. Use "transceivers" to communicate selections across one or two crosstalk groups and optionally transcode key information from one crosstalk group to another.

See https://rstudio.github.io/crosstalk/ for details on crosstalk.

See https://bwlewis.github.io/crosstool/ for crosstool examples.

The crosstool package defines three almost ridiculously barebones generic widget classes: transmitter, receiver, and transceiver. Unlike typical crosstalk widgets, these widgets are generally uni-directional, either transmitting or receiving data on a crosstalk selection interface. "Transceiver" widgets use two one-sided communication channels, either on the same crosstalk group or across two crosstalk groups.

The widget is intended as low-level prototype for generic user-interface control elements, similar to the control widgets available in shiny. They can be used with other crosstalk-enabled widgets that can benefit from external user-interface controls.

This is a crude, wacky prototype!

Examples

Using 'receiver' to debug crosstalk key state

Eavesdrop on widget chatter.

library(crosstalk)
library(crosstool)
library(htmltools)
library(d3scatter) # devtools::install_github("jcheng5/d3scatter")

x = iris[sample(150, 50), ]
rownames(x) = NULL
x$key = state.name
sd = SharedData$new(x, key=~key)
d1 = d3scatter(sd, x=~Petal.Length, y=~Petal.Width, color=~Species, width="100%")
d2 = d3scatter(sd, x=~Sepal.Length, y=~Sepal.Width, color=~Species, width="100%")

rx = crosstool(sd, "receiver",  html="<span style='font-size:14pt;'/>", value="innerText", width="100%")
bscols(d1, d2, rx, widths=c(4,4,4))

Using 'transmitter' to set initial selection state for a crosstalk group

This is one way to address the discussion in rstudio/crosstalk#16.

library(crosstalk)
library(crosstool)
library(htmltools)
library(d3scatter)

x = iris[sample(150, 50), ]
rownames(x) = NULL
x$key = state.name
sd = SharedData$new(x, key=~key)
d1 = d3scatter(sd, x=~Petal.Length, y=~Petal.Width, color=~Species, width="100%")
d2 = d3scatter(sd, x=~Sepal.Length, y=~Sepal.Width, color=~Species, width="100%")

rx = crosstool(sd, "receiver",  html="<span style='font-size:14pt;'/>", value="innerText", width="100%")

# Make an initial random selection and use the 'init' option
i = sample(state.name, 10)
tx = crosstool(sd, "transmitter", init=i)

bscols(d1, d2, rx, tx, widths=c(4,4,4,0))