How to get a static tmap with shiny as show in rstudio?

Question

I'm learning shiny and tmap. I'm able to get the map I want on Rstudio (a static tmap). But when I try a similar tmap code with shiny, I always get an interactive map.

From this reprex, I try to get the same map I get on Rstudio. I try to add tmap_mode("plot") after the renderTmap, but it doesn't work.

My question look too simple... but can't find the answer! Thank for your help.

library(shiny)

data(World)
world_vars <- setdiff(names(World), c("iso_a3", "name", "sovereignt", "geometry"))


ui <- fluidPage(
  tmapOutput("map"),
  selectInput("var", "Variable", world_vars)
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  output$map <- renderTmap({
    tmap_mode("plot")
    tm_shape(World) +
      tm_polygons(world_vars[1], zindex = 401)
  })
}   

shinyApp(ui, server)

Answer 1

tmap_mode() doesn't work inside Shiny for me either, but there's actually a very easy alternative: instead of tmapOutput and renderTmap for interactive maps, you can just use plotOutput and renderPlot.

So the following code creates the exact map from your image and lets the user select a variable to plot:

library(shiny)
library(tmap)

data(World)
world_vars <- setdiff(names(World), c("iso_a3", "name", "sovereignt", "geometry"))


ui <- fluidPage(
  plotOutput("map"),
  selectInput("var", "Variable", world_vars)
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  output$map <- renderPlot({
    tm_shape(World) +
      tm_polygons(input$var)
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)