R Shiny How make a help box appear with an action button

Question

I have created an action button as follows in my ui

div(style="display:inline-block",actionButton("action", label = "Help"))

I want this button to create a help box which the user can close which contains text on how to use this app. How do i do this?

Also, how do I customise this button? such as font, colour, alignment...

Thanks

Answer 1

Clicking the action button increments a value, initially 0. You could use renderUI in your server.R file to define a widget that is empty when input$action is even, and helpText when it is odd. That way, the same action button would both open and close the help.

output$HelpBox = renderUI({
  if (input$action %% 2){
    helpText("Here is some help for you")
  } else {
    return()
  }
})

In ui.R, use the uiOutput function to display the widget. Remember that it will display nothing until the action button is clicked.

uiOutput("HelpBox")