Save a Ggplot2 Time Series Plot Grob Generated by Ggplotgrob

Save a ggplot2 time series plot grob generated by ggplotGrob

library(tidyverse)
library(lubridate)
library(scales)

set.seed(123)
df <- tibble(
  date = as.Date(41000:42000, origin = "1899-12-30"), 
  value = c(rnorm(500, 5), rnorm(501, 10))
)

# create year column for facet
df <- df %>% 
  mutate(year = as.factor(year(date)))

p <- ggplot(df, aes(date, value)) + 
  geom_line() + 
  geom_vline(xintercept = as.numeric(df$date[yday(df$date) == 1]), color = "grey60") + 
  scale_x_date(date_labels = "%b", 
               breaks = pretty_breaks(),
               expand = c(0, 0)) +
  # switch the facet strip label to the bottom
  facet_grid(.~ year, space = 'free_x', scales = 'free_x', switch = 'x') +
  labs(x = "") +
  theme_bw(base_size = 14, base_family = 'mono') +
  theme(panel.grid.minor.x = element_blank()) + 
  # remove facet spacing on x-direction
  theme(panel.spacing.x = unit(0,"line")) +
  # switch the facet strip label to outside 
  # remove background color
  theme(strip.placement = 'outside',
        strip.background.x = element_blank())
p

ggsave("plot.png", plot = p, 
       type = "cairo", 
       width = 11, height = 8.5, units = "in", 
       dpi = 150)

---

Using theme_classic()

p <- ggplot(df, aes(date, value)) + 
  geom_line() + 
  geom_vline(xintercept = as.numeric(df$date[yday(df$date) == 1]), color = "grey60") + 
  scale_x_date(date_labels = "%b", 
               breaks = pretty_breaks(),
               expand = c(0, 0)) +
  # switch the facet strip label to the bottom
  facet_grid(.~ year, space = 'free_x', scales = 'free_x', switch = 'x') +
  labs(x = "") +
  theme_classic(base_size = 14, base_family = 'mono') +
  theme(panel.grid.minor.x = element_blank()) + 
  # remove facet spacing on x-direction
  theme(panel.spacing.x = unit(0,"line")) +
  # switch the facet strip label to outside 
  # remove background color
  theme(strip.placement = 'outside',
        strip.background.x = element_blank())
p

Add the top and right most borders

ymax <- ceiling(1.1 * max(df$value, na.rm = TRUE))
xmax <- max(df$date, na.rm = TRUE)

p <- ggplot(df, aes(date, value)) + 
  geom_line() + 
  geom_vline(xintercept = as.numeric(df$date[yday(df$date) == 1]), color = "grey60") + 
  scale_x_date(date_labels = "%b", 
               breaks = pretty_breaks(),
               expand = c(0, 0)) +
  # switch the facet strip label to the bottom
  facet_grid(.~ year, space = 'free_x', scales = 'free_x', switch = 'x') +
  labs(x = "") +
  theme_classic(base_size = 14, base_family = 'mono') +
  theme(panel.grid.minor.x = element_blank()) + 
  # remove facet spacing on x-direction
  theme(panel.spacing.x = unit(0,"line")) +
  # switch the facet strip label to outside 
  # remove background color
  theme(strip.placement = 'outside',
        strip.background.x = element_blank()) +
  ### add top and right most borders
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0), limits = c(0, ymax)) +
  geom_hline(yintercept = ymax) +
  geom_vline(xintercept = as.numeric(df$date[df$date == xmax])) +
  theme(panel.grid.major = element_line())
p

^{Created on 2018-10-01 by the reprex package (v0.2.1.9000)}

How do I save or plot from within lists

Use lapply(plotlist, ggplot2::ggplotGrob) to generate a list of ggplot2 grobs. This list of grobs can then be passed to gridExtra::grid.arrange.

For example:

library(ggplot2)
library(gridExtra)

plotlist <- list()

for(a in c(1:4)) {
    for(b in c(1:4)) {
        plotlist[[paste0("Z",a,b)]] <-
            qplot(rnorm(40,a,b),
                  geom="histogram",
                  xlab=paste0("Z",a,b))
    }
}

grid.arrange(grobs = lapply(plotlist, ggplotGrob), widths = c(1, 1), ncol = 2)

Saving grid.arrange() plot to file

grid.arrange draws directly on a device. arrangeGrob, on the other hand, doesn't draw anything but returns a grob g, that you can pass to ggsave(file="whatever.pdf", g).

The reason it works differently than with ggplot objects, where by default the last plot is being saved if not specified, is that ggplot2 invisibly keeps track of the latest plot, and I don't think grid.arrange should mess with this counter private to the package.

Saving plots using grid_draw method instead of gridExtra

Forgot to mention that width and height of png ( ) will depend on the plot you have so play around with it.

This is how gtable object is saved:

depending on the plot, the dimensions of the png can be adjusted to properly fit the plot

png("g.png",width = 1000, height = 600, units = "px") 
grid.draw(g) 
dev.off()

Inverse of ggplotGrob?

I would say no. ggplotGrob is a one-way street. grob objects are drawing primitives defined by grid. You can create arbitrary grobs from scratch. There's no general way to turn a random collection of grobs back into a function that would generate them (it's not invertible because it's not 1:1). Once you go grob, you never go back.

You could wrap a ggplot object in a custom class and overload the plot/print commands to do some custom grob manipulation, but that's probably even more hack-ish.

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