Setting Column Width in R Shiny Datatable Does Not Work in Case of Lots of Column

Shiny: Unable to set column width in Shiny DataTables

You need to add scrollX=TRUE in the options as per https://github.com/rstudio/DT/issues/29

How to adjust width of one column for shiny DataTables created with the JavaScript?

DataTables are not very nice, when it comes to column widths. It sais here that widths will never be taken literally from the given definition, but always adapted to the table size and what not. Thats why your efforts were in vain.

But you can still shape things to your need. At first, using checkboxInput creates a container around the checkbox that has a default width of 300 pixels, which are the main reason for the column to be so big. You could in a first step unset this width to see what "natural" size the column would have.

If you want to reduce the size even more, a css rule for the column's width is working fine. For that and the above part, we equip the first column cells with a specific class name.

Weave

columnDefs = list(list(targets = 0, className = "small" ))

into your DataTable definition and then add

td.small .shiny-input-container{width:auto;}

to your css to unset the predefined width in this column.

Further minifications can be achieved by the css rule

td.small{width:30px;}

Change column width in datatable (with URLs in one column or without)

You can create a HTML link instead of just showing the URL as a raw text, if you use datatable(escape = FALSE):

library(data.table)
library(DT)
var1 <- rep(seq(as.Date("2020-01-01"), as.Date("2020-01-10"), by = "days"), each = 5)
var2 <- rep(c("a", "b", "c", "d", "e"), each = 10)
var3 <- c(rep(NA, 10), "This is a non-empty entry.", rep(NA, 5), "yet another text. oh wow, this one is long. in the real world, there are even longer texts,", rep(NA, 2), "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.", "Every 60 seconds in Africa a minute passes", rep(NA, 20), "some more dummy text", rep(NA, 8))
var4 <- c(rep(NA, 10), "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55208855/how-to-set-column-width-in-r-shiny-data-table", rep(NA, 5), "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25205410/r-shiny-set-datatable-column-width?noredirect=1&lq=1", rep(NA, 2), "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAn7baRbhx4", "https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica", rep(NA, 20), "https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2022/feb/06/senegal-v-egypt-africa-cup-of-nations-final-live-score-updates", rep(NA, 8))
var5 <- c(1:50)
var6 <- c(21:70)
df <- data.table(var1, var2, var3, var4, var5, var6)

# Transform text to HTML
df$var4 <- sapply(df$var4, function(x) paste0("<a href=\"", x, '\">link</a>'))

datatable(
  escape = FALSE,
  df[var3 != "NA", c("var1", "var2", "var3", "var4", "var6")],
  options = list(
    scrollX = TRUE,
    autoWidth = TRUE,
    columnDefs = list((list(targets = c(1, 2), visible = TRUE, width = "5%")), (list(targets = c(3), visible = TRUE, width = "80%")), (list(targets = c(4, 5), visible = TRUE, width = "5%")))
  )
)

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