R: Shiny dateRangeInput format

Question

I am using the packet shiny for R and I implemented a dateRangeInput in my ui.R:

   dateRangeInput("date", "Date range:",
                       start  = "2013-05-15",
                       end    = "2013-10-01",
                       min    = "2013-05-15",
                       max    = "2013-10-01",
                       format = "dd/mm/yy",
                       separator = " - ")

If I display the selected min and max values, i get the following (weird) output:

Min date value:

renderText({(input$date[1])})

Output:

 15840

Max date value:

renderText({(input$date[2])})

Output:

15979

Why do I get these numbers in the output and not the selected ate from the ui.R itself: 2013-05-15 and 2013-10-01 ? And how can I transform it to such a format? as.Date does not work.

Answer 1

The actual value is days since the unix epoch, use format(input$date[1]).

Answer 2

You can use some thing like this

observe({
x <- format(input$date[1])

  cat(x,file="/home/indraneel/temp/r1outfile.txt",append=TRUE)

})