Converting character to date turning all dates to NA & x-axis of ggplot not in chronological order [duplicate]

Question

I am using an online ONS dataset of inflation and trying to chart it, but when plotting it with ggplot the x-axis is not in chronological order. (the order is random)

Here is my code, with the link to the dataset:

install.packages("tidyverse") library("tidyverse") install.packages("lubridate") library("lubridate") #webscraping the ONS inflation csv file cpi<-read.csv(url("https://www.ons.gov.uk/generator?format=csv&uri=/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/d7g7/mm23")) #removing rows 1 to 7 which contain descriptors, keeping this as a dataframe cpi<-cpi[-c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7),,drop=FALSE] #renaming columns as date and inflation cpi<- cpi %>% rename(date=Title) cpi<- cpi %>% rename(inflation=CPI.ANNUAL.RATE.00..ALL.ITEMS.2015.100) #proper title characters for date cut_cpi$date<- str_to_title(cut_cpi$date) #subsetting cpi dataset in order to have only the data from the row of 2020 JAN to the last row cut_cpi<- cpi[(which(cpi$date=="2020 JAN")):nrow(cpi),] #plotting inflation in a line chart ggplot(cut_cpi,aes(x=date,y=inflation,group=1,))+geom_line(colour="black")+labs(title="CPI inflation from January 2020") +theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust=1))

I think the problem might have to do with dates as that is a character rather than a date. But I cannot turn that into date class.

I tried with this

cut_cpi$date <- as_factor(cut_cpi$date) cut_cpi$date <- as_date(cut_cpi$date, format='%Y %b')

I tried checking the locale and it is not a problem

> Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME") [1] "English_United Kingdom.1252"

In Stack questions/answers, code blocks using "code fences" (usually triple backticks ```) must put the fences on a line by themselves with no code with them, as in ```\n. The first code-fence for each block may optionally include a language-hint, such as ```r. The hint itself is not shown, it is used for coloring the code. If there is real code after the backticks, it is interpreted as a language (ergo not show); if there is real code before the backticks, the backticks do not end the block. See stackoverflow.com/editing-help and meta.stackexchange.com/a/22189 — r2evans
– r2evans, Commented May 13, 2022 at 13:49
Your x-axis is categorical, you need to convert to Date-class, and then use scale_x_date to format it (see its date_breaks= and date_labels= arguments). Relevant: stackoverflow.com/q/9322923/3358272, stackoverflow.com/q/6242955/3358272, stackoverflow.com/q/56557922/3358272, stackoverflow.com/q/65647998/3358272, stackoverflow.com/q/66606315/3358272 — r2evans
– r2evans, Commented May 13, 2022 at 13:56
The component of this question not a duplicate of those five links is fixed by using cpi$inflation <- as.numeric(cpi$inflation). — r2evans
– r2evans, Commented May 13, 2022 at 13:58

Roger-123 · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-13 13:56:05Z

You had two issues.

1- inflation was stored as character not a number so it couldn't be plotted

2- date was stored as a character, not a date, so it would just be plotted in alphabetical order. It has to be a date so it can be sorted properly, then just format the scale so that it prints the date in the format that you want.

library("tidyverse") library("lubridate") #webscraping the ONS inflation csv file cpi<-read.csv(url("https://www.ons.gov.uk/generator?format=csv&uri=/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/d7g7/mm23")) #removing rows 1 to 7 which contain descriptors, keeping this as a dataframe cpi<-cpi[-c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7),,drop=FALSE] #renaming columns as date and inflation cpi<- cpi %>% rename(date=Title) cpi<- cpi %>% rename(inflation=CPI.ANNUAL.RATE.00..ALL.ITEMS.2015.100) #proper title characters for date #THIS FAILS. cut_cpi data.frame hasn't been created yet so this doesn't work. Unnecessary so just remove it. #cut_cpi$date<- str_to_title(cut_cpi$date) #subsetting cpi dataset in order to have only the data from the row of 2020 JAN to the last row cut_cpi<- cpi[(which(cpi$date=="2020 JAN")):nrow(cpi),] #NEW cut_cpi<- cut_cpi %>% mutate(real_date_format= parse_date_time(cut_cpi$date, orders = "%Y %b")) %>% arrange(desc(real_date_format)) #plotting inflation in a line chart #NEW # remove extra comma on aes # converted inflation to numeric (was character) # converted real_date_format to date (was datetime). scale_x_date breaks with datetime ggplot(cut_cpi,aes(x=as_date(real_date_format), y=as.numeric(inflation),group=1))+ geom_line(colour="black")+ labs(title="CPI inflation from January 2020") + theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust=1)) + #NEW scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 month", date_labels = "%b %Y")

Claire Kermorvant · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-13 13:56:20Z

you can try this :

ggplot(cut_cpi,aes(x=ym(date),y=inflation,group=1,))+geom_line(colour="black")+labs(title="CPI inflation from January 2020") +theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust=1))+ scale_x_date(date_breaks = "3 month")

you can change the "3 month" by whatever you want.

Claire

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