Adding Text Labels to {leaflet} Maps

This lesson is called Adding Text Labels to {leaflet} Maps, part of the Mapping with R course. This lesson is called Adding Text Labels to {leaflet} Maps, part of the Mapping with R course.

Transcript

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View code shown in video

library(leaflet)
library(tidyverse)
library(tidycensus)
library(janitor)
library(tigris)
library(scales)
library(sf)

speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84 <-
  read_sf(
    "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfortherestofus/mapping-with-r-v2/refs/heads/main/data/speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84.geojson"
  )

speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84_with_labels <-
  speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84 |>
  mutate(
    text_label = str_glue(
      "<b>{percent(pct, accuracy = 0.1)}</b> of the population of <b>{name}</b> speaks a language other than English"
    )
  )

leaflet() |>
  addProviderTiles("CartoDB.Positron") |>
  addPolygons(
    data = speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84,
    weight = 1
  )

leaflet() |>
  addProviderTiles("CartoDB.Positron") |>
  addPolygons(
    data = speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84,
    weight = 1,
    popup = ~name
  )

leaflet() |>
  addProviderTiles("CartoDB.Positron") |>
  addPolygons(
    data = speak_language_other_than_english_wgs84_with_labels,
    weight = 1,
    popup = ~text_label
  )

Your Turn

Using the code to make your map from the last lesson on refugee populations, add a label and/or popup that shows the number of refugees from each country.

Learn More

The popups and labels vignette shows how to use them within {leaflet}.

Have any questions? Put them below and we will help you out!

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Jessica Cacioppo • May 12, 2025

Hi David, I just wanted to point out a workaround if you do actually want to show the html tags in the label instead of using a popup. It works if you use the HTML function from {htmltools}. E.g. label = ~lapply(text_label, htmltools::HTML)