How to Hide or Show an Output Based on a Control

Instead of filtering outputs, you may want to show or hide entire outputs based on the selection in a Control. Keep in mind this method only works for R-based outputs and custom Calculations on the page. This article describes how to use a Combo box Control to let the user select whether to show or hide the custom Calculation with comments on the Page.

Requirements

A Control Box control (see How to Create a Combo Box Filter or How to Create a List Box Filter).
An R-based output or a custom Calculation to show or hide.

Method

In this example, we create a custom Calculation on the page that contains a comment. It is shown/hidden based on the combo box.

Create the comment output that we will be hiding/showing. Click the Calculation > Custom Code from the toolbar.
Click on the page to place the output.

Paste in your custom code to create the desired output in the Code panel. The code below shows a comment in the box as in the gif above:

#Create comment to show inside the double quotes
comment = "Wow! This is great! What an insight-filled chart!"

#Create the text box using HTML for the formatting
#the paste function combines static HTML code with the comment created above
your.html = paste0('<style>div.mystyle {font-size: 24px; 
                                       font-family: Open Sans; 
                                       padding-left: 10px; 
                                       padding-top: 10px; 
                                       padding-bottom: 10px; 
                                       background-color: #42afe3; 
                                       color: white ; 
                                       opacity: 1;}
                   </style>
                   <body><div class = "mystyle">', 
                         comment, 
                   '</div></body>')

#Render the HTML code above using the Box function in rhtmlMetro
my.comment = rhtmlMetro::Box(text = your.html, text.as.html = TRUE)

To make the output dependent, we will use an if-else construct to return something different based on the value of the combo box. Paste the following code at the bottom of the R Code:

#If Hide comments is selected in the combo box show a blank transparent output
#otherwise show the my.comment HTML formatted text
#change Combo.box to the GENERAL > name of your combo box (or 
#click on it with the cursor inside the code)
#change "Hide comments" to the option selected to hide the output
#change my.comment to the output you want to show if it's not hidden

if (Combo.box == "Hide comments") "" else my.comment

Notes

You can paste the code in Step 4 inside the Code panel of an R-based output (such as a visualization) as well to show or hide it based on a combo box. Just ensure my.comment is the specific name of the visualization.
You can use similar code to switch the output shown to other outputs as well, see How to Use a Control Box as an Input for Calculations.

How to Use a Control Box as an Input for Calculations

How to Use the Same Control on Multiple Pages

How to Connect Filters to Controls Using R Code

How to Dynamically Change a Question Based on a Control Box

How to Select Which Rows or Columns to Show in a Visualization Based on a Control Box Selection

How to Switch Logos and Images Based on a Control Box Selection

How to Change Weighting Using a Control Box