How to generate dynamical `color_tiles` in {reactablefmtr}

Question

Is there a way to generate the column defitions for color_tiles dynamically? Here is my current approach which does not work correctly, as the tiles are always colored by the last class-column that I pass.

library(reactable)
library(reactablefmtr)
library(dplyr)
library(purrr)

tile_column <- function(x, ref_column, name, show_text = FALSE) {
  colDef(
    show = TRUE,
    name = name,
    cell = color_tiles(
      x,
      color_by = ref_column,
      colors = c("red", "orange", "yellow", "limegreen", "green"),
      box_shadow = TRUE,
      show_text = show_text,
    ),
    na = ""
  )
}

data <- tibble(
  name = paste("name", 1:10),
  val1 = paste("val1", 1:10),
  val2 = paste("val2", 1:10),
  class1 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE),
  class2 = sample(1:5, 10, replace = TRUE),
)

col_definitions1 <- list(
  name = colDef(show = TRUE, name = "Name")
)

col_definitions2 <- list()
for (i in 1:2) {
  col_definitions2 <- c(
    col_definitions2,
    list(tile_column(data, ref_column = paste0("class", i), name = paste("Column", i), show_text = TRUE))
  )
}
col_definitions3 <- col_definitions2 |> set_names(paste0("val", 1:2))

col_definitions <- c(col_definitions1, col_definitions3)
# browser()
data %>%
  reactable(
    defaultColDef = colDef(show = FALSE),
    columns = col_definitions
  )

Answer 1

Not sure what's the issue. But to make your code work you could switch to lapply instead of using a for loop. Just a guess, but as a similar issue is well known when creating ggplot2 inside a for loop the reason for the issue might be related to lazy evaluation.

library(reactable)
library(reactablefmtr)
library(dplyr)

set.seed(123)

col_definitions2 <- lapply(1:2, function(i) tile_column(data, ref_column = paste0("class", i), name = paste("Column", i), show_text = TRUE))
names(col_definitions2) <- paste0("val", 1:2)

col_definitions <- c(col_definitions1, col_definitions2)

data %>%
  reactable(
    defaultColDef = colDef(show = FALSE),
    columns = col_definitions
  )