Sort of Dates ggplot2

Question

Hello, that’s my first question in this world of R and I haven’t completely mastered it yet. I am learning this wonderful language and now I have serious problems plotting a graph using the package ggplot2, data are dates and they do not follow the natural order of dates.

Follows code

ggplot(tab.OpTT)+ 
geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v1, group = 1), fill = "black")+                                             
geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v2, group = 1), fill = "red")+
geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v3, group = 1), fill = "blue")+                       
labs(x = "Período de 05/02 á 18/02", y = "Chamadas criadas", title = "teste 
1")

Follows data:

Dia;v3;v1;v2;v4;v5
19-jan;44;166;156;8,13;0,15
20-jan;32;74;86;11,65;0
21-jan;29;16;21;13,47;0
22-jan;77;163;104;1,56;0,22
23-jan;31;162;210;3,65;0,2
24-jan;49;179;161;2,39;0,13
25-jan;43;185;192;2,94;0,17
26-jan;29;157;172;4,48;0,15
27-jan;62;127;94;2,33;0,07
28-jan;55;25;41;3,41;0
29-jan;53;238;240;2,47;0,31
30-jan;60;222;222;2,45;0,21
31-jan;60;174;174;2,29;0,47
1-fev;39;166;188;3,69;0,22
2-fev;15;123;148;6,23;0,51
3-fev;12;103;107;8,02;0
4-fev;13;24;27;7,65;0
5-fev;36;221;198;2,89;0,18
6-fev;37;155;157;2,71;0,4
7-fev;25;151;165;4,18;0,25
8-fev;26;149;148;4,05;0,28
9-fev;20;147;153;5,47;0,15

So, I tried several ways to fix using the package lubridate, but wanted to put in the format available in the table DD-M not to occupy space on the x-axis and the lubridate only works with the patterns using year (dd-mm-yyyy). It is also noticed that there is a lot of data on the x-axis and it would be good to show only a few samples on this axis, but using the total data for the variable Dia in the construction of the graph.

I’m grateful for any help that comes.

Obs. the data v4 and v5 are not used.

Answer 1

My suggestion is that dates in the R are always represented in the format yyyy-mm-dd. This makes it much easier to work with the software when working with this type of data. He needs to understand the exact days you are dealing with so that the results displayed are correct.

That said, I’ll create a column with date data in your dataset:

library(lubridate)

tab.OpTT$Dia <- seq(ymd("2018-01-19"), ymd("2018-02-09"), by="days")

With R requires me to put a year on the date, I chose to use 2018. This can be changed later according to your needs.

Now just add the date formatting to the chart you had already made:

ggplot(tab.OpTT)+ 
  geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v1, group = 1), fill = "black")+                 
  geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v2, group = 1), fill = "red")+
  geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v3, group = 1), fill = "blue")+
  labs(x = "Período de 05/02 á 18/02", y = "Chamadas criadas", title = "teste 1") +
  scale_x_date(breaks=seq(min(tab.OpTT$Dia), max(tab.OpTT$Dia), by="1 day"), 
    date_labels="%d/%m", minor_breaks=seq(min(tab.OpTT$Dia),
    max(tab.OpTT$Dia), by="1 day")) +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1))

Note that I used a number to refer to the month. It is possible to use another formatting for the date if I change an argument within scale_x_date:

ggplot(tab.OpTT)+ 
  geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v1, group = 1), fill = "black")+                 
  geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v2, group = 1), fill = "red")+
  geom_area(aes(x = Dia, y = v3, group = 1), fill = "blue")+
  labs(x = "Período de 05/02 á 18/02", y = "Chamadas criadas", title = "teste 1") +
  scale_x_date(breaks=seq(min(tab.OpTT$Dia), max(tab.OpTT$Dia), by="1 day"), 
    date_labels="%d/%b", minor_breaks=seq(min(tab.OpTT$Dia),
    max(tab.OpTT$Dia), by="1 day")) +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1))

Anyway, the options are several. If the solutions I posted here are not ideal, I recommend that you play with scale_x_date until you find something you like.