Tidy evaluation programming and ggplot2

Question

Trying to write a relatively simple wrapper to produce some plots, but can not work out how to specify tidy evaluation of grouping variables specified as ... an

Answer 1

The new released ggplot2 v3.0.0 supports !! inside aes(). With some minor modification, your function is now working

library(tidyverse)

my_plot <- function(df = starwars,
                    select = c(height, mass),
                    ...){
  results <- list()

  ## Tidyeval arguments
  quo_select <- enquo(select)

  # only need quo here, if quos is used then we need to `unlist` to 
  # convert its output from list to vector
  quo_group  <- quo(...) 

  ## Filter, reshape and plot
  results$df <- df %>%
    dplyr::filter(!is.na(!!!quo_group)) %>%
    dplyr::select(!!quo_select, !!!quo_group) %>%
    gather(key = variable, value = value, !!!quo_select) %>% 
    ## Specify what to plot, including coloring by the supplied dots `...` 
    ggplot(aes(value, color = !!quo_group, fill = !!quo_group)) +  # unquote inside aes
    geom_histogram(stat = 'count')  +
    facet_wrap(vars(variable), scales = 'free', strip.position = 'bottom')
  return(results)
}

## Plot height and mass as facets but color histograms by hair_color
my_plot(df = starwars, select = c(height, mass), hair_color)

Created on 2018-09-12 by the reprex package (v0.2.0.9000).

Answer 2

I'm not sure I understand the question. Does this satisfy the requirements?

library(ggplot2)
library(data.table)

your_plot <- function(df, select, color=NULL) {

  df <- as.data.table(df)[, mget(na.omit(c(select, color)))]

  ggplot(melt(df, color, select), aes_string(x=quote(value), color=color)) +
    geom_histogram(stat="count") +
    facet_wrap(~variable, scales="free", strip.position="bottom")

}

your_plot(dplyr::starwars, c("height", "mass"), "hair_color")

This uses melt to stack the select variables, with the color variable(s) repeated for each stack. It also uses aes_string, since aes(x=value, color=color) fails when color=NULL.