CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rdataframemetadataorganization
Martin H
Martin H

Reputation: 749

Organization of data with metadata

I have a dataframe that contains two columns X-data and Y-data. This represents some experimental data.

Now I have a lot of additional information that I want to associate with this data, such as temperatures, flow rates and so on the sample was recorded at. I have this metadata in a second dataframe.

The data and metadata should always stay together, but I also want to be able to do calculations with the data

As I have many of those data-metadata pairs (>100), I was wondering what people think is an efficient way to organize the data?

For now, I have the two dataframes in a list, but I find accessing the individual values or data-columns tedious (= a lot of code and brackets to write).

Upvotes: 0

Views: 278

Answers (1)

James
James

Reputation: 66834

You can use an attribute:

dfr <- data.frame(x=1:3,y=rnorm(3))
meta <- list(temp="30C",date=as.Date("2013-02-27"))
attr(dfr,"meta") <- meta

dfr
  x          y
1 1 -1.3580532
2 2 -0.9873850
3 3  0.3809447

attr(dfr,"meta")
$temp
[1] "30C"

$date
[1] "2013-02-27"

str(dfr)
'data.frame':   3 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ x: int  1 2 3
 $ y: num  -1.358 -0.987 0.381
 - attr(*, "meta")=List of 2
  ..$ temp: chr "30C"
  ..$ date: Date, format: "2013-02-27"

Upvotes: 1

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