What R package or code can be used to build custom-made GUIs?

Question

I am looking to create GUI that takes in a few inputs from the user (for example gender, age, and race as clickable categories), then assigns a user ID to each input (which would be displayed as the output in the GUI). Under the hood would be a dataset that the GUI is creating with this user input (In this example, it would be 4 variables: user ID, gender, age, and race).

Has anyone created a GUI like this before? Any R package or code recommendations?

Thanks!

Answer 1

There are lots of ways to do this. Here is one using the add-on package gWidgets. Should work with either RGtk2 or tcltk backends.

library(gWidgets)
items <- data.frame(id=numeric(0), gender=character(0), age=numeric(0), race=character(0), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
genders <- c("Male", "Female")
race <- c("Black", "Hispanic", "Other")

w <- gwindow("Capn's GUI", visible=FALSE)
g <- ggroup(cont=w, horizontal=FALSE)
lyt <- glayout(cont=g)
lyt[1,1] <- "Gender:"
lyt[1,2] <- gradio(genders, cont=lyt)

lyt[2,1] <- "Age:"
lyt[2,2] <- gedit("40", coerce.with=as.numeric, cont=lyt)

lyt[3,1] <- "Race:"
lyt[3,2] <- gcombobox(race, selected=0L, cont=lyt)

lyt[4,2] <- gbutton("Add", cont=lyt, handler=function(h,...) {
  vals <- lapply(lyt[1:3, 2], svalue)
  id <- nrow(items) + 1                 # or roll your own
  items[id, ] <<- c(id, vals)
  tbl[] <- items
})
gseparator(cont=g)
tbl <- gtable(items, cont=g)


visible(w) <- TRUE