R: Brilliant dateRangeInput format

Question

I am using shiny package for R and I have implemented dateRangeInput in my ui.R:

   dateRangeInput("date", "Date range:",
                       start  = "2013-05-15",
                       end    = "2013-10-01",
                       min    = "2013-05-15",
                       max    = "2013-10-01",
                       format = "dd/mm/yy",
                       separator = " - ")

If I display the selected min and max values, I get the following (strange) output:

Minimum Date:

renderText({(input$date[1])})

Output:

 15840

Maximum date value:

renderText({(input$date[2])})

Output:

15979

Why do I get these numbers at the output, and not selected from ui.R itself: 2013-05-15 and 2013-10-01? And how can I convert it to this format? as.Date does not work.

Answer 1

Actual value is days since unix, use format(input$date[1]).

Answer 2

You can use something like this

observe({
x <- format(input$date[1])

  cat(x,file="/home/indraneel/temp/r1outfile.txt",append=TRUE)

})

Answer 3

dateRangeInput

date_start <- input$dateRangeInput_name_one[1]
date_end <- input$dateRangeInput_name_one[2]

BTW: if you 'date' is an integer, you can convert it to 'date' using the following code:

 date_start_date <- as.Date(date_start, origin = "1970-01-01")
 date_end_date <- as.Date(date_end, origin = "1970-01-01")