R, Format date on X axis using ggplot

Question

After aggregating, "filtering" and parsing a column with date and hours by using as.Date, also transforming it by using melt function, my data looks like this:

DATE    variable value
1 13-09-20  Billete_50 20405
2 14-09-20  Billete_50 19808
3 13-09-20 Billete_100 27787
4 14-09-20 Billete_100 20361
5 13-09-20       Total 48192
6 14-09-20       Total 40169

I want a linear graph to show the data, but it looks like this:

It's in spanish, I'm sorry, but the date is almost the same, it may say only September (Sep), but it is showing October, January, April, July, then back to October.

This is my ggplot line:

ggplot(plotCajero1Melted, aes(x=DATE, y=value, col=variable)) + geom_line() +xlab("Fecha") +ylab("Saldo") +ggtitle("Cajero 1")

What should I do? It's something with the date? I was thinking in the year, it is represented in a short way, probably it is making ggplot to have a weird behavior, or maybe a ggplot option that i'm missing?

dc37 · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-18 19:51:36Z

1

You're right, your date format is not read as it should be (it seems to be read as Year-Month-Day).

You can modify the date format for example by using the function dmy from lubridate package to indicate r to read the date as Day-Month-Year:

library(lubridate)
df$DATE <- dmy(df$DATE)

ggplot(df, aes(x = DATE, y = value, color = variable))+
  geom_line()

Is it what you are looking for ?

answered Feb 18, 2020 at 19:51

dc37

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3 Comments

elG Over a year ago

Absolutely, thank you so much, you saved my day. I applied for a javascript+python+sql Job, there said "R desirable but not required" and the test they sent me is only about R, very funny haha. I started learning about it 23 hours ago.

dc37 Over a year ago

Haha ! Good luck then ;) Fingers crossed

elG Over a year ago

dc37 Thak you :D

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