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Changelog

dashboardr 0.5.0

New Features

Standalone HTML Export

  • generate_dashboard(standalone = TRUE): Generate a single self-contained HTML file with all CSS, JavaScript, images, and fonts embedded inline. The resulting file can be shared via email or file transfer without a web server.

New Vignettes

  • Customizing Visualizations: Comprehensive guide to color palettes, tooltips, legends, data labels, axis formatting, error bars, sorting, and backend options — with GSS data examples.
  • Date Inputs: Using type = "date" and type = "daterange" for time-based filtering.
  • URL Parameters: Shareable dashboard links with pre-set filter state via enable_url_params().
  • Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA features including skip-to-content, focus indicators, modal focus trapping, keyboard tab navigation, ARIA live regions, and reduced motion support via enable_accessibility().

HTML Helper Functions

Internal

  • Viz type registry (R/viz_registry.R) replaces hardcoded switch dispatch in R/viz_generation.R.
  • Raw HTML in generated QMD replaced with clean R function calls.
  • R CMD check clean (0 errors, 0 warnings).

dashboardr 0.4.2

New Features

Widget Convenience Wrappers

New exported convenience functions for embedding charts from alternative backends:

  • add_echarts(): Embed an echarts4r chart directly into a dashboard page.
  • add_ggiraph(): Embed a ggiraph interactive plot directly into a dashboard page.
  • add_ggplot(): Embed a static ggplot2 plot, rendered via Quarto’s knitr graphics device with optional height/width control.

MCP Server for LLM Assistants

  • dashboardr_mcp_server(): Launch an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes dashboardr documentation, function reference, example code, and visualization guides to LLM-powered coding assistants (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code Copilot). Requires optional packages ellmer + mcptools (or mcpr as fallback).

Bug Fixes

Content Tabgroups (Issue #14)

  • Fixed: The tabgroup argument is now correctly applied to all content block types (add_text, add_card, add_reactable, and other content types), not just visualizations. Previously, tabgroup had no effect for non-viz content. Standalone content blocks, items inside content collections, and items added directly to pages via add_text() / add_card() / etc. now all respect tabgroup and render in their respective tabs.

CI Stability

  • Fixed: GitHub Actions coverage and R CMD check workflows were failing with exit code 143 (OOM kill). Added skip_on_covr_ci() to feature-matrix and generation-heavy tests that were running under covr instrumentation without memory guards. Added memory diagnostics and timeout-minutes to workflows for better failure reporting.

dashboardr 0.4.1

Bug Fixes

Content Tabgroups (Issue #14)

  • Fixed: The tabgroup argument is now correctly applied to all content block types (add_text, add_card, add_reactable, and other content types), not just visualizations. Previously, tabgroup had no effect for non-viz content. Standalone content blocks, items inside content collections, and items added directly to pages via add_text() / add_card() / etc. now all respect tabgroup and render in their respective tabs.

dashboardr 0.4.0

Bug Fixes

Cross-Tab Stacked Bar Labels (Critical)

  • Fixed: Stacked bar data labels showed full floating-point precision (e.g. 61.53846153846154) when charts were rebuilt client-side via cross-tab filtering. The R-side rounding was correct, but the JavaScript _rebuildStackedBarEcharts, _rebuildStackedBarPlotly, and _rebuildStackedBarSeries (Highcharts) functions recomputed percentages from raw counts without rounding. All three JS rebuild paths now round to the configured label_decimals (default: 1 for percent, 0 for count).
  • New: labelDecimals is now passed from R to the JS cross-tab config so client-side rebuilds respect the same decimal precision as the initial R render.
  • New: Labels on very small bar segments (< 5% of their stack) are now automatically hidden across all backends (echarts4r, Highcharts, Plotly, ggiraph) to avoid visual clutter.

Quarto Discovery

  • Fixed: preview(quarto = TRUE) and .install_iconify_extension() now use .find_quarto_path() which searches PATH, the quarto R package, and the RStudio-bundled Quarto location. Previously, only Sys.which("quarto") was used, causing failures in environments where Quarto was installed but not on PATH.

Documentation & Tests

  • Documented legend_position parameter across all 10 visualization functions.
  • Added .color to globalVariables() to suppress R CMD check note.
  • Marked sparkline_card functions as @keywords internal to fix pkgdown reference index.
  • Fixed all empty testthat tests and resolved Quarto detection skips.

New Features

Multi-Backend Chart Support

All 17 visualization functions now support a backend parameter for rendering with different charting libraries. The default backend remains "highcharter" for full backward compatibility.

Supported backends: "highcharter" (default), "plotly", "echarts4r", "ggiraph".

# Per-chart backend selection
viz_bar(data, x_var = "category", backend = "plotly")
viz_timeline(data, time_var = "year", y_var = "value", backend = "echarts4r")

# Dashboard-wide backend (applies to all charts)
create_dashboard(title = "My Dashboard", backend = "plotly")

Alternative backends are optional dependencies (in Suggests). Install only what you need:

install.packages(c("plotly", "echarts4r", "ggiraph"))

Widget Embedding

New functions for embedding arbitrary htmlwidgets in dashboards:

library(plotly)
my_plot <- plot_ly(mtcars, x = ~wt, y = ~mpg, type = "scatter", mode = "markers")
collection <- content_collection() + add_plotly(my_plot, title = "Weight vs MPG")

dashboardr 0.3.0

New Features

  • Added a Community Gallery showcasing dashboardr dashboards, hosted as a Vue.js SPA at gallery/index.html.
  • Users can submit their own dashboards via a GitHub issue template.
  • Gallery is prominently featured in the pkgdown site navbar, README, getting-started vignette, and demos vignette.

About Pages for Demo Dashboards

  • All demo dashboards (inputs, sidebar, sidebar-gss, overlay, and all 6 tabset themes) now include an About page with a description of demonstrated features, example usage code, and a direct link to the source code on GitHub.

Bug Fixes

Input Filtering

  • Select inputs: Fixed filterVars JSON serialization — single-element character vectors (e.g., c("country")) were serialized as a string instead of an array, causing the JavaScript to iterate over individual characters instead of matching filter values.
  • Slider inputs: Slider filters were collected but never passed to rebuildFromCrossTab(), so labeled sliders had no effect on cross-tab charts. Sliders now correctly filter data by label position.
  • Switch inputs: Switch-toggled series (e.g., “Global Average” with override = TRUE) were invisible because cross-tab data filtering excluded them. Override series data is now preserved during filtering, and switch visibility is applied after cross-tab rebuild.

dashboardr 0.2.1

New Features

New sidebar-based dashboard pattern with client-side cross-tab filtering. Sidebar radio/checkbox inputs dynamically filter and rebuild Highcharts visualizations (stacked bars and timelines) without server round-trips.

  • show_when: Conditionally show/hide visualizations based on sidebar input values. Uses formula syntax (e.g., show_when = ~ time_period == "Over Time"). Hidden elements fully collapse in layout, including empty bslib-grid containers.

  • title_map: Dynamic chart titles that interpolate sidebar input values. Uses {placeholder} syntax in titles with a simple named-vector mapping. Auto-detects which input to read from — no manual wiring needed.

    title_map = list(key_response = c("Marijuana" = "Legal", "Gun Control" = "Favor"))

  • group_order (timeline): Control the order of series in timeline charts. Pass a character vector to enforce consistent series/legend ordering across chart types.

  • Named color_palette: Pass a named character vector to color_palette to assign fixed colors per series name, ensuring consistent colors across stacked bars and timelines.

    color_palette = c("Male" = "#F28E2B", "Female" = "#E15759", "White" = "#EDC948")

    Unnamed vectors still work as positional color cycles (backwards compatible).

Stacked Bar Enhancements

  • viz_stackedbar() now supports title_map for dynamic title interpolation, matching timeline functionality.
  • Named color_palette resolves colors by stack-level name, not just position.

Timeline Enhancements

  • viz_timeline() now supports group_order for explicit series ordering.
  • Named color_palette assigns colors per group name, preserved during client-side filter rebuilds.
  • title_map with auto-detection of the relevant sidebar input.

Client-Side Filtering (JS)

  • Stacked bar and timeline charts embed cross-tab data and config as HTML attributes, enabling instant client-side rebuilds when sidebar inputs change.
  • Color maps (colorMap) and group order (groupOrder) are embedded in chart config and respected during JS rebuilds.
  • Dynamic title interpolation via titleTemplate and titleLookups in the chart config.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed C stack overflow when serializing haven_labelled columns in cross-tab data.
  • Fixed .serialize_arg() to correctly preserve names in named character vectors.
  • Fixed empty bslib-grid containers still occupying space when their children are hidden by show_when (now uses !important CSS class).
  • Fixed dynamic title {placeholder} not interpolating due to chart ID matching mismatch in JS.

Demo

  • New GSS Explorer sidebar demo (dev/demo_sidebar_dashboard.R) showcasing all new features: sidebar inputs, conditional visibility, dynamic titles, cross-tab filtering, named color palettes, and consistent series ordering.

dashboardr 0.2.0

Bug Fixes

Pagination Fix

  • Fixed add_pagination() duplicating content across all pages: When using the + operator to add visualizations to a page, the viz_embedded_in_content flag caused .generate_default_page_content() to use the original full content_blocks instead of the correctly-split paginated visualizations. Each paginated page now correctly contains only its designated content section.

Tabgroup Improvements

  • Fixed shared_first_level behavior for nested tabgroups: The shared_first_level feature (which wraps multiple top-level tabgroups into a single shared tabset) is now automatically disabled when any of the top-level tabgroups contain nested children. This prevents redundant wrapper tabsets when using deeply nested tabgroup structures like category/wave/breakdown.

dashboardr 0.1.0

Unified Stacked Bar Chart Function

viz_stackedbar() is now a unified function that supports two modes:

Mode 1: Grouped/Crosstab (use x_var + stack_var)

# Show how one variable breaks down by another
viz_stackedbar(data, x_var = "education", stack_var = "gender")

Mode 2: Multi-Variable/Battery (use x_vars)

# Compare multiple survey questions side-by-side
viz_stackedbar(data, x_vars = c("q1", "q2", "q3"))

This eliminates confusion between viz_stackedbar() and viz_stackedbars() - you now only need to remember one function! The function automatically detects which mode to use based on the parameters you provide.

Migration from viz_stackedbars(): Simply change the function name - all parameters work the same way:

# Old way (still works, shows deprecation notice)
viz_stackedbars(data, x_vars = c("q1", "q2", "q3"))

# New preferred way
viz_stackedbar(data, x_vars = c("q1", "q2", "q3"))

The viz_stackedbars() function is soft-deprecated and will continue to work, but we recommend using viz_stackedbar() for all new code.

Breaking Changes

Visualization Function Renaming

All create_* visualization functions have been renamed to viz_* for clarity and to distinguish them from dashboard-level creation functions:

Old Name New Name
create_histogram() viz_histogram()
create_bar() viz_bar()
create_stackedbar() viz_stackedbar()
create_stackedbars() viz_stackedbars()
create_timeline() viz_timeline()
create_heatmap() viz_heatmap()
create_scatter() viz_scatter()
create_map() viz_map()
create_treemap() viz_treemap()

The old function names are deprecated and will show a warning when used. They will be removed in a future version.

Migration: Simply replace create_ with viz_ in your code.

Timeline Parameter Renaming

Timeline chart parameters have been renamed for consistency with other visualization types:

Old Name New Name
response_var y_var
response_filter y_filter
response_filter_combine y_filter_combine
response_filter_label y_filter_label
response_levels y_levels
response_breaks y_breaks
response_bin_labels y_bin_labels

New Features

Error Bars Support in Bar Charts

viz_bar() now supports error bars for displaying uncertainty in mean values:

  • New value_var parameter: When provided, bars show the mean of this variable per category (instead of counts)
  • New error_bars parameter: Choose from “none” (default), “sd” (standard deviation), “se” (standard error), or “ci” (confidence interval)
  • New ci_level parameter: Set confidence level for CI (default 0.95 for 95% CI)
  • Customizable appearance via error_bar_color and error_bar_width parameters
  • Works with both simple and grouped bar charts

Example usage:

# Bar chart with means and 95% CI
viz_bar(
  data = mtcars,
  x_var = "cyl",
  value_var = "mpg",
  error_bars = "ci",
  title = "Mean MPG by Cylinders"
)

# Grouped bars with standard error
viz_bar(
  data = mtcars,
  x_var = "cyl",
  group_var = "am",
  value_var = "mpg",
  error_bars = "se"
)

Early Validation for Visualizations

  • preview() now automatically validates all visualization specs before rendering, catching missing required parameters (like stack_var for stacked bar charts) and invalid column names early with helpful error messages
  • New validate_specs() function for manual validation of content collections
  • print(collection, check = TRUE) validates specs while viewing the structure

New Visualization Types

  • viz_density(): Create kernel density estimate plots for visualizing continuous distributions. Supports grouped densities, adjustable bandwidth, rug marks, and weighted estimation.
  • viz_boxplot(): Create interactive box-and-whisker plots. Supports grouped boxplots, horizontal orientation, outlier display, and weighted percentiles.

Histogram Improvements

  • Fixed handling of character-numeric values (e.g., “25”, “30”) - now correctly converted to numeric for binning
  • Improved default bin labels to show readable ranges (e.g., “18-29” instead of “[18,30)”)
  • Added data_labels_enabled parameter to control display of value labels on bars

Data Labels Control

Documentation

  • Added new visualization vignettes: density_vignette, boxplot_vignette, histogram_vignette, scatter_vignette, treemap_vignette, map_vignette
  • Interactive inputs demo and documentation in vignette("advanced-features")
  • Improved cross-references between vignettes

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed Unicode/emoji rendering issues in console output
  • Fixed nested tabgroup rendering in preview()
  • Fixed parameter mapping for stackedbars visualization type