This is a functionality I wanted to add for some time… and finally it’s here! I just pushed on GitHub a new version of rleafmap which brings the possibility to attach legends to data layers. You simply need to create a legend object with the function layerLegend and then to pass this object when you create your data layer via the legend argument. Thus, a map can contain different legends, each of them being independent. This is cool because it means that when you mask a data layer with the layer control, the legend will also disappear.

You can create legends with five different styles to better suit your data: points, lines, polygons, icons and gradient (see the graphic).

Legends for John Snow’s cholera map

I give as example a new version of the cholera map.
Here is the code:

devtools::install_github("fkeck/rleafmap")
devtools::install_github("Hackout2/epimap")
library(rleafmap)
library(epimap)

data(cholera)
n.chol <- ifelse(cholera$deaths$Count > 4, 6, cholera$deaths$Count) + 2

# Basemap layer
cdbpos.bm <- basemap("cartodb.positron.nolab")

# Legends
death.leg <- layerLegend(style = "points", title = "Deaths",
                         labels = c("1", "2", "3", "4", "> 4"), size = c(3, 4, 5, 6, 8),
                         fill.col = "red", fill.alpha = 0.9)
pumps.leg <- layerLegend(style = "icons", title = NA, labels = "Water pump",
                         png = "/home/francois/water.png", png.width = 31, png.height = 31)

# Data layers
death.points <- spLayer(cholera$deaths, legend = death.leg,
                        size = n.chol, fill.col =  "red", fill.alpha = 0.9)
pumps.points <- spLayer(cholera$pumps, legend = pumps.leg,
                        png = "/home/francois/water.png",
                        png.width=31, png.height=31)

my.ui <- ui(layers = "topright")

writeMap(cdbpos.bm, pumps.points, death.points, interface = my.ui,
         setView = c(51.5135, -0.137), setZoom = 17)

And here the result. Enjoy and check out the legend interactivity when you play with the layer selector 😉