Date: 2026-07-09

# Row level access

#### 2026-07-09

Sometimes you do not want to give a user access to the entire dataset. You can either hide rows or give read-only access.

## Hide rows completely

In this example we only allow user Mickey to see his own row.

We simply can use `dplyr::filter()` on the table. Note that this is most useful if you combine this with backends that support `in_place` editing. E.g. you can retrieve only a subset of rows from a database and specifically modify those. Take a look at the ‘relational database’ vignettes for more information on how to work with a database.

    library(editbl)
    library(shiny)
    conn <- DBI::dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite(), "")
    df <- data.frame(
        user = c("Albert","Donald","Mickey"),
        email = c('albert@einstein.com', 'donald@duck.com', 'mickey@mouse.com')
    )
    DBI::dbWriteTable(conn, "characters", df)
    tibble <- dplyr::tbl(conn, 'characters')

    CURRENT_USER = 'Mickey'

    shiny::shinyApp(
        ui = editbl::eDTOutput('id'),
        server =  function(input, output,session){
          result <- eDT(id='id',
            data = tibble %>% filter(user == CURRENT_USER),
            in_place = TRUE
          )
        })

Shiny applications not supported in static R Markdown documents

    print(tibble)

    ## # Source:   table<`characters`> [?? x 2]
    ## # Database: sqlite 3.53.3 []
    ##   user   email
    ##   <chr>  <chr>
    ## 1 Albert albert@einstein.com
    ## 2 Donald donald@duck.com
    ## 3 Mickey mickey@mouse.com

    DBI::dbDisconnect(conn)

## Read-only access

In this example we only allow user Mickey to modify his own row. In contrast to the previous example, he can still read data from others.

The arguments `canEditRow` and `canDeleteRow` can be used to specify logic describing if modfications are allowed. The passed on logic shoud be a function with the argument `row`. This is a single row of the displayed table in datatype `tibble`.

    library(editbl)
    df <- tibble::tibble(
        user = c("Albert","Donald","Mickey"),
        email = c('albert@einstein.com', 'donald@duck.com', 'mickey@mouse.com')
    )

    CURRENT_USER = 'Mickey'

    rowModificationLogic <- function(row){
            if (row[,'user'] == CURRENT_USER){
              TRUE
            } else {
              FALSE
            }
        }

    shiny::shinyApp(
        ui = editbl::eDTOutput('id'),
        server =  function(input, output,session){
          eDT(id='id',
            data = df,
            canEditRow = rowModificationLogic,
            canDeleteRow = rowModificationLogic
            )
        })

Shiny applications not supported in static R Markdown documents