renderMenu resulting in strange formatting, R Shiny Dashboard - r

Question

I am creating a sidebar menu from the Server of my Shiny app, but the formatting of the server-generated menu doesn't match with the menu created in the UI.
I have tried some shinyjs hide/show functions after assigning a div() to the menu which also ends up with an odd, non-matching format. I think renderMenu is probably the better path. I would prefer not to 'hack' with CSS, but any help is appreciated.
Here's a working script:
library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)
ui <- dashboardPage(
dashboardHeader(title = 'Header'),
dashboardSidebar(
sidebarMenu(
menuItem('First Menu', tabName = 'first_menu'),
menuSubItem('sub1', tabName = 'sub_1'),
menuSubItem('sub2', tabName = 'sub_2'),
uiOutput('server_menu')
)
),
dashboardBody()
)
server <- function(input, output) {
output$server_menu <- renderMenu({
list(
menuItem('Second Menu', tabName = 'second_menu'),
menuSubItem('sub3', tabName = 'sub_3'),
menuSubItem('sub4', tabName = 'sub_4')
)
})
}
shinyApp(ui, server)
Which produces this result:
Any advice on how I can solve this would be awesome! Cheers

Answer 1

Instead of uiOutput, use menuItemOutput. Also, your hierarchy of menuItem and menuSubItem seems to be incorrect. menuSubItem should be child of menuItem
library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)
ui <- dashboardPage(
dashboardHeader(title = 'Header'),
dashboardSidebar(
sidebarMenu(
menuItem(
'First Menu',
tabName = 'first_menu',
menuSubItem('sub1', tabName = 'sub_1'),
menuSubItem('sub2', tabName = 'sub_2')
),
menuItemOutput('server_menu') # Changed from uiOuput to menuItemOutput
)
),
dashboardBody()
)
server <- function(input, output) {
output$server_menu <- renderMenu({
list(
# modified hierarchies
menuItem(
'Second Menu',
tabName = 'second_menu',
menuSubItem('sub3', tabName = 'sub_3'),
menuSubItem('sub4', tabName = 'sub_4')
)
)
})
}
shinyApp(ui, server)