No way to ignore a certain input or output when expecting values

[daattali]

Suppose I have an app with many inputs. One of the packages I use also creates an ghost input just as a way to communicate with shiny, but it's not an input that I want to keep track of with expect_values() because it's a random number.

Currently, expect_values() can either capture ALL inputs, or a list of inputs. But it has no way of excluding a specific input.

As a concrete example, shinyAce::aceEditor() seems to create an input called contents_shinyAce_annotationTrigger that is a random number, so I don't want to include it in my expectations.

[schloerke]

If you had a function, would you be ok if the execution of the black...

1. serializing all possible values from Shiny server
2. reading the JSON in {shinytest2}
3. trimming the JSON
4. and re-saving the JSON

The trimming step would be done with a Filter-like function. I believe the static black list would get unwieldy quickly.

Would this work? Then you can decide what is kept from within the function

[schloerke]

The difficult part is that Shiny must receive a URL of information on which values to return. So only static values may be used. However, we can ask for everything and then trim the values in a post-processing step.

[daattali]

Trimming a json that shows all the values would be just fine

[sneumann]

Hi,
I'd like to know whether "trimming a json" would help me in another simple use case as well. In my (first) shinytest2 attempts
expect_values() fails due to a timestamp in my app:

-     "projectName": "xyz project (created 2024-01-24_16.48.36.708312)",
+     "projectName": "xyz project (created 2024-01-24_16.49.41.955485)", 

Does trimming of e.g. testthat/_snaps/linux-4.3/shinytest2/app-002.json result in that I could either 1) ignore projectName values entirely, or 2) expect a match on a substring xyz project (created ?
I tried editing the json, and the diff shows (not unexpectedly)

+     "projectName": "xyz project (created 2024-01-24_16.49.41.955485)", 

So I guess that "trimming step would be done with a Filter-like function" needs to be done before the expect_values() in my tests.
Or maybe add expect_values(output_ignore = c("projectName")) ?
I would like to avoid littering my app with isTRUE(getOption("shiny.testmode"))

Yours,
Steffen

[LDSamson]

This is the workaround I currently use:

app <- AppDriver$new("myapp")

input_names <- names(app$get_values(input = TRUE)$input)
app$expect_values(input = vector_select(input_names, exclude = "random_input_that_always_changes"))

with vector_select being a simple regex selector function:

vector_select <- function(
    x,
    include = NULL,
    exclude = NULL
){
  if(is.null(x)) return(character(0))
  stopifnot(is.character(x))
  stopifnot(is.null(include) || is.character(include))
  stopifnot(is.null(exclude) || is.character(exclude))
  if(!is.null(include)){
    x <- x[grepl(paste(include, collapse = "|"), x)]
  }
  if(!is.null(exclude)){
    x <- x[!grepl(paste(exclude, collapse = "|"), x)]
  }
  x
}