Auto complete and selection of multiple values in text box shiny

Question

Is it possible to select multi values using auto complete strings similar to google search and stack overflow tags selection in shiny text box.

dataset<-cbind("John Doe","Ash","Ajay sharma","Ken Chong","Will Smith","Neo"....etc)

I want to select multiple variables from the above dataset as a auto fill in my textbox and pass it to my server.R

ui.R

shinyUI(fluidPage(
  titlePanel("test"),

  sidebarLayout(
    sidebarPanel(
      helpText("text"),

      textInput("txt","Enter the text",""),
      #Pass the dataset here for auto complete

     ),

    mainPanel(
      tabsetPanel(type="tab",tabPanel("Summary"),textOutput("text2"))

    )
  )
))

server.R

# server.R

shinyServer(function(input, output) {

output$text2<- renderText({
paste("hello",input$txt)

 })


}
)

EDITED

I have used select2input from shinysky for selecting mulitiple varialbes but now I have added submit button to get selected values together.

#ui.R
select2Input("txt","This is a multiple select2Input",choices=c("a","b","c"),selected=c("")),

actionButton("go","submit") 

I want to bind selected option lets say user selected a and c then new variable is

#server.R
input$go #if pressed submit button
var<-cbind("a","c")
output$text<-renderText({ print ("var")})

but this is not working

Answer 1

Look into shinysky package and textInput.typeahead. You can further customize the style of the textinput yourself. Edit: I added example with select2Input from the shinysky package also for reference

rm(list = ls())

library(shinysky)
library(shiny)

my_autocomplete_list <- c("John Doe","Ash","Ajay sharma","Ken Chong","Will Smith","Neo")

ui <- shinyUI(
  fluidPage(tags$style(type="text/css",".shiny-output-error { visibility: hidden; }",".shiny-output-error:before { visibility: hidden; }"),
            tags$style(type="text/css","#search { top: 50% !important;left: 50% !important;margin-top: -100px !important;margin-left: -250px 
                       !important; color: blue;font-size: 20px;font-style: italic;}"),         

            mainPanel(  
              # one way of doing it
              textInput.typeahead(id="search",
                                  placeholder="Type your name please",
                                  local=data.frame(name=c(my_autocomplete_list)),
                                  valueKey = "name",
                                  tokens=c(1:length(my_autocomplete_list)),
                                  template = HTML("<p class='repo-language'>{{info}}</p> <p class='repo-name'>{{name}}</p>")
              ),
              br(),br(),
              # using select2Input
              select2Input("select2Input1","",choices=c(my_autocomplete_list),type = c("input", "select"))
              )
  )
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {}
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Edit 2 as per request. Please wrap your objects in a reactive expressions as I did e.g. var <- reactive({...}) so you can re-use those later

rm(list = ls())

library(shinysky)
library(shiny)

my_autocomplete_list <- c("John Doe","Ash","Ajay sharma","Ken Chong","Will Smith","Neo")

ui <- shinyUI(
  fluidPage(sidebarPanel(select2Input("txt","",choices=c("a","b","c"),selected=c("")), br(),actionButton("go","submit"), width =2),
            mainPanel(textOutput('text'))
  )
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {

  var <- reactive({
    if(input$go==0){return()}
    isolate({
      input$go
      cbind("a","c")
    })
  })  
  output$text <- renderText({var()})
}
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Answer 2

A much easier approach imho is to use shiny::selectizeInput(). It allows you to autocomplete inputs with via the choices argument.

rm(list = ls())

library(shiny)

my_autocomplete_list <- c("John Doe","Ash","Ajay sharma",
                          "Ken Chong","Will Smith","Neo")

ui <- shinyUI(
  selectizeInput(
    inputId = 'search',
    label = 'Search',
    choices = my_autocomplete_list,
    selected = NULL,
    multiple = TRUE, # allow for multiple inputs
    options = list(create = FALSE) # if TRUE, allows newly created inputs
  )
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {}
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)