parseDirPath provides wrong path if defaultPath and defaultRoot are set in shinyDirChoose

[lbusett]

Hi,

I am working with shinyDirButton and shinyDirChoose to allow selection of a folder, starting from a specific default folder specified throgh defaultPath and defaultRoot. The problem is that when I then invoke parseDirPath to get the selected folder name, apparently the defaultPath value is ignored.

In practice, the returned path is

 `defaultRoot/name_of_folder`

while if I get the expected functionality right, it should be:

 `defaultRoot/defaultPath/name_of_folder`

Below you can find an example (not really reprex because it is related to my "paths"):

library(shiny)
library(shinyFiles)

ui <- {
  volumes <- c(main = "/home/lb/")
  shinyUI(fluidPage(
  
  titlePanel("Example"),
  shinyDirButton("savedir", "Save folder", "Save folder")
  ))
}
server <- shinyServer(function(input, output, session) {
  
  shinyDirChoose(input, "savedir",
                 roots=volumes,
                 defaultPath = "tmp", 
                 defaultRoot = "main",
                 session=session)
  
  observeEvent(input$savedir, {
     dirinfo <- parseDirPath(volumes, input$savedir)
     print(dirinfo)
  })
})

shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

If I run the example, I correctly get a "list of folders" starting from my "/home/lb/tmp" (although I see "main" on the top instead than "tmp" or "main/tmp"):

However, if I now select the "buttami" subfolder and click on "select", the path returned by

dirinfo <- parseDirPath(volumes, input$savedir)

is "/home/lb/buttami", while I would expect it to be "/home/lb/tmp/buttami"

Am I missing something/misunderstanding the functionality, here?

[vnijs]

@lbusett I see the issue. I'm not sure if there is a clean fix. My initial reaction is to simply get rid of defaultPath as things are likely to get messed up if you have multiple roots and you change away from the default root. If you want to default directory, why not just add to roots (see "Alternative" example below?

Also, I'm having some issues even selecting a directory if defaultPath is set in the "Original" example below.

@thomasp85, @Thercast, @AFriendlyRobot Thoughts?

Original issue:

library(shiny)
library(shinyFiles)

ui <- {
  volumes <- c(main = "/Users/vnijs/", Desktop = "/Users/vnijs/Desktop")
  shinyUI(fluidPage(
    
    titlePanel("Example"),
    shinyDirButton("savedir", "Save folder", "Save folder")
  ))
}
server <- shinyServer(function(input, output, session) {
  
  shinyDirChoose(input, "savedir",
                 roots=volumes,
                 defaultPath = "Desktop",
                 defaultRoot = "main",
                 session=session)
  
  observeEvent(input$savedir, {
    dirinfo <- parseDirPath(volumes, input$savedir)
    print(dirinfo)
  })
})

shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Alternative that seems less problematic:

library(shiny)
library(shinyFiles)

ui <- {
  shinyUI(fluidPage(
    titlePanel("Example"),
    shinyDirButton("savedir", "Save folder", "Save folder")
  ))
}
server <- shinyServer(function(input, output, session) {
  
  shinyDirChoose(input, "savedir",
                 roots = c(main = "/Users/vnijs/", Desktop = "/Users/vnijs/Desktop"),
                 defaultRoot = "main",
                 session=session)
  
  observeEvent(input$savedir, {
    dirinfo <- parseDirPath(c(main = "/Users/vnijs/", Desktop = "/Users/vnijs/Desktop"), input$savedir)
    print(dirinfo)
  })
})

shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

[lbusett]

@vnijs Thanks for looking into this.

The "use case" here is that I am developing a shinyApp that creates and relies on a "standardized" folder structure. Since I have multiple files selectors for different types of datasets, I findit useful to automatically set the folder chooser on the basis of the kind of dataset, by changing defaultPath.

However, I did not consider the possibility that the user could also change "root", making a mess with defaultroot. I recon that your suggestion of instead "adding" a new defaultRoot could be a better and safer solution (although it would not solve the issue we see when specifying both defaultPath and defaultRoot, leading to a "broken" path).

[DanChaltiel]

I have the same issue.
I want to select a directory starting from the working directory.
Most of the time, the user will select a sibling of the working directory, so I need to be able to move up, and wd cannot be a root.
However, wd can be in any arbitrary volume, so I have to change the default root accordingly.
Here is the code I'm using (in server.R):

volumes = shinyFiles::getVolumes()()
default_dir = getwd()
defaultRoot = str_subset(volumes, str_sub(default_dir, end=2)) %0% NULL
defaultPath = str_remove(default_dir, defaultRoot)
defaultRoot = names(volumes[volumes==defaultRoot])

shinyFiles::shinyDirChoose(input, "dir", roots=volumes, session=session,
                           defaultRoot=defaultRoot, defaultPath=defaultPath)

The working directory is F:/GITHUB/mypackage, but due to this bug, the UI treats it like it is in F:/.
This leads to this confusing behavior, where the correct folder content is shown in the wrong container.
If I click "Select", it will return F:/Meta, which indeed doesn't exist (unlike F:/GITHUB/mypackage/Meta).