Show/hide series interractively in dygraph

Question

Is there a possibility to show/hide the series interactively in a R dygraph?

The idea is to compare many time series and have for example a ticking box where one could select/deselect the series to show or hide any of them.

I could not find such an option in the dygraphs package. Such ticking legend exist for example in the package leaflet with addLayersControl().

Answer 1

You can do it with the package "shiny" in R Studio. No need to venture outside of R Studio (unless you really want to).

This chunk of code should work for anyone so long as you have the four packages installed. Use it as a jumping off point with your own data. I used drop down menus, but Shiny lets you use check boxes for user inputs as well. Hope this helps!

library(shiny)                # to dynamically select/plot variables here
library(tidyverse)            # required for transmute under server logic
library(dygraphs)             
library(magrittr)             # allows you to use pipes with dygraph()

a <- (1:10)                   # create example dataframe for dygraphs to plot
b <- rnorm(10, mean = 2)      
c <- rnorm(10, mean = 3)
d <- rnorm(10, mean = 4)

df <- as.data.frame(cbind(a,b,c,d))     

# User interface ----     # shiny does checkboxes too, modify accordingly
ui3 <- fluidPage(
  titlePanel("Example"),
  
  sidebarLayout(                                           # dropdown menus
    sidebarPanel(
      selectInput("column1", label = "Select a variable",  
              choices = c("None Selected", "Column B", "Column C", "Column D"), 
              selected = "Column B"),
      
      selectInput("column2", label = "Select a variable", 
              choices = c("None Selected", "Column B", "Column C", "Column D"), 
              selected = "None Selected")),
    
    mainPanel(dygraphOutput("dygraph"))
  )
)

# Server logic ----
server3 <- function(input, output) {
  output$dygraph <- renderDygraph({
    
  datax <- switch(input$column1,       # With no mapping for "None Selected"...
                   "Column B" = 2,     # ... nothing is graphed.
                   "Column C" = 3,
                   "Column D" = 4)
  
  datay <- switch(input$column2, 
                   "Column B" = 2,
                   "Column C" = 3,
                   "Column D" = 4)
  
  
  df2 <- df |>                            # df2 is dynamic, based on user input
    transmute(a, df[datax], df[datay])    # ... df2 passed to dygraph()
  
  dygraph(df2, main = "Fancy Plot Title") |>
    dyAxis("x", label = "Time") |>
    dyAxis("y", label = "Value")
  
})
  
}

# Run app ----
shinyApp(ui3, server3)           # you can run this in a browser if you prefer