Highlight UI Elements within the RStudio IDE

This function can be used to highlight UI elements within the RStudio IDE. UI elements can be selected using query selectors; most commonly, one should choose to highlight elements based on their IDs when available.

highlightUi(queries)

Arguments

queries

A list of "query" objects. Each query should be a list with entries "query" and "parent". See Queries for more details.

Details

The tool at:

Help -> Diagnostics -> Show DOM Elements 

can be useful for identifying the classes and IDs assigned to the different elements within RStudio.

Note

The highlightUi function was introduced in RStudio 1.3.658.

Queries

Elements are selected using the same queries as through the web querySelectorAll() API. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/querySelectorAll for more details.

For example, to highlight the Save icon within the Source pane, one might use:

rstudioapi::highlightUi("#rstudio_tb_savesourcedoc") 

In some cases, multiple UI elements need to be highlighted -- e.g. if you want to highlight both a menu button, and a menu item within the menu displayed after the button is pressed. We'll use the Environment Pane's Import Dataset button as an example. To highlight the From Text (readr) command, you might use:

rstudioapi::highlightUi( list(
list(query = "#rstudio_mb_import_dataset", parent = 0L), list(query =
"#rstudio_label_from_text_readr_command", parent = 1L) ) ) 

Examples

if (FALSE) rstudioapi::highlightUi("#rstudio_workbench_panel_git")

# clear current highlights
if (FALSE) rstudioapi::highlightUi("")

# highlight within an RMD
if (FALSE) rstudioapi::highlightUi(".rstudio_chunk_setup .rstudio_run_chunk")

# Optionally provide a callback adjacent to 
# the queries that will be executed when the 
# highlighted element is clicked on.
if (FALSE) rstudioapi::highlightUi(
  list(
    list(
      query="#rstudio_workbench_panel_git", 
      callback="rstudioapi::highlightUi('')"
    )
  )
)