generate interactive plots in AAAARRRRRRRR

by csv soundsystem

An R package to create interactive HighCharts in JavaScript from a dataframe. You'll want to use dcast in the reshape2 package to format it nicely. More on that

Currently supported chart types: bar, line, area, column.

Chart types to come: datetime x-axis (coming soon), scatterplot and others

Terms of service note: This library uses the HighCharts.js library. Which, in addition to being awesome, has some particular terms of use if you are a for-profit venture. Before using it on your site, we suggest you make sure you are squared with their terms.

Install the package

library("devtools")
install_github("highChaRRRts", "csvsoundsystem")
library("highChaRRRts")

What data structure does it need?

There are two general data formats when dealing with dataframes and we'll use the terminology "long" and "wide". For reference, read the R Cookbook explanation on the difference between the two. Generally, a long format is one where each row contains all the information for a given record so you can append records one at a time.

name,variable,value
John,apples,2
John,oranges,3
Jane,pears,1

A wide format is one that is column dependent

name,apples,oranges,pears
John,2,3,0
Jane,0,01

highchARRRts prefers your data to be in long format except for categorical data, like the example above.

To convert from long to wide, use the dcast method in the reshape2 package for R. The R Cookpost post can tell you about all the different parameters you might need to use depending on the complexity of your data.

For everything else, long format is what you'll want, which is great because your data is probably already in long format.

Usage

highchARRRts has the following required parameters ...

highchaRRRts(dcasted_df, type, main, xlab, ylab, output, pal)

Then in your console, cd to the directory it just created, default name "chart_output". Then create a simple web server such as

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Then point your browser to 0.0.0.0:8000

So...

highChaRRRts(dcasted_df, type="line", main="Title of the Chart", xlab="X Label", ylab="Y Label, output="chart_output", pal="RdYlBu")

And a colorful example...

library("devtools")
install_github("highChaRRRts", "csvsoundsystem")
library("highChaRRRts")

# generate example data...
group <- paste0("group_", 1:11)
var1 <- rnorm(11, mean=100, sd=30)
var2 <- rnorm(11, mean=100, sd=30)
var3 <- rnorm(11, mean=100, sd=30)
var4 <- rnorm(11, mean=100, sd=30)
var5 <- rnorm(11, mean=100, sd=30)
df <- data.frame(group, var1, var2, var3, var4, var5)

highChaRRRts(df,
             type="column",
             main="Title of the chart",
             xlab="X Label",
             ylab="Y Label",
             output = "chart_output",
             pal="Spectral")

Check out the charts here

Questions?

Ask the developers / maintainers:

• @brianabelson
• @mhkeller