Making plot functions with ggplot and aes_string

Question

In Hadley Wickham\'s ggplot2 book in chapter 10.3, he alludes to making plot functions. I want to make many similar plots that use faceting, but I cannot r

Answer 1

Here are some alternatives using new features from ggplot2 V3.0.0

Using strings :

flowerPlot <- function(dat, sl, sw, pl, sp){
  ggplot(data=dat, aes(x=!!ensym(sl), y=!!ensym(sw), color=!!ensym(pl))) + 
    geom_point() +
    facet_wrap(eval(expr(~!!ensym(sp))))
}

flowerPlot(iris, sl='Sepal.Length', sw='Sepal.Width', pl='Petal.Length', sp = 'Species')

Using names :

flowerPlot2 <- function(dat, sl, sw, pl, sp){
  ggplot(data=dat, aes(x=!!enquo(sl), y=!!enquo(sw), color=!!enquo(pl))) + 
    geom_point() +
    facet_wrap(eval(expr(~!!enquo(sp))))
}

flowerPlot2(iris, sl= Sepal.Length, sw=Sepal.Width, pl=Petal.Length, sp = Species)

Answer 2

facet_wrap expects a formula as its first argument, so I'd just coerce it with as.formula, and feed in my sp as a string:

flowerPlotWrap <- function(dat, sl, sw, pl, sp){
      ggplot(data=dat, aes_string(x=sl, y=sw, color=pl)) + 
      geom_point() +facet_wrap(as.formula(sp)) # note the as.formula
}
pl.flower3 <- flowerPlotWrap(iris, sl='Sepal.Length', 
                             sw='Sepal.Width', pl='Petal.Length', 
                             sp= '~Species')

Alternatively if my formula was always going to look like ~[columnname], I could just build that in to flowerPlotWrap and pass in the column name:

flowerPlotWrap <- function(dat, sl, sw, pl, sp){
      ggplot(data=dat, aes_string(x=sl, y=sw, color=pl)) + 
      geom_point() +facet_wrap(as.formula(sprintf('~%s',sp)))
}
pl.flower3 <- flowerPlotWrap(iris, sl='Sepal.Length', 
                             sw='Sepal.Width', pl='Petal.Length', 
                             sp= 'Species')

(kudos to the reproducible example in your question! If everyone asked questions as well as that they'd get answers much quicker).

Answer 3

Your function worked fine for me unmodified if I just used sp='Species', i.e. the name of the variable you want to facet by.

flowerPlotWrap(iris, sl='Sepal.Length', sw='Sepal.Width', pl='Petal.Length', sp='Species')