Call updateTabItems from inside Shiny module - r

Question

In my shiny app I have lots of valueBoxes, each representing a tabItem in the sidebar of the shinydashboard. When clicking on the valueBox the page should move to the correct tab.
Instead of copypasting the code lots of times I wrote a reusable module which renders the valueBox and changes the class of the valueBox into an actionButton. In the server part I have included an observeEvent which calls updateTabItems when the valueBox is clicked. But when clicked nothing happens. It seems that the module cannot manipulate the dashboard sidebar.
library(shiny)
library(shinydashboard)
value_box_output <- function(.id) {
ns <- NS(.id)
valueBoxOutput(ns("overview.box"))
}
value_box <- function(input, output, session, .value, .subtitle, .tab.name) {
ns <- session$ns
output$overview.box <- renderValueBox({
box1 <- valueBox(
.value,
.subtitle,
href = "#",
width = NULL
)
box1$children[[1]]$attribs$class <- "action-button"
box1$children[[1]]$attribs$id <- ns("button")
box1
})
observeEvent(input$button, {
print("clicked")
updateTabItems(session, inputId = "tabs", selected = .tab.name)
})
}
ui <- dashboardPage(
dashboardHeader(title = "Title"),
dashboardSidebar(
sidebarMenu(
id = "tabs",
menuItem("Overview", tabName = "Overview"),
menuItem("Tab 1", tabName = "Tab_1")
)
),
dashboardBody(
tabItems(
tabItem("Overview", value_box_output("tab")),
tabItem("Tab_1")
)
)
)
server <- function(input, output, session) {
callModule(value_box,
"tab",
.value = 33,
.subtitle = "Tab 1",
.tab.name = "Tab_1")
}
shinyApp(ui, server)

Answer 1

You can find the answer in this post: Accessing parent namespace inside a shiny module
Basically, in updateTabItems() inside a moulde, you need to call the parent's session, not the session of the modul.
Thus, add a variable for your session to callModule() and call it in updateTabItems().