CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rplotggplot2rstudio
Mohammad Ansarin
Mohammad Ansarin

Reputation: 81

Ggplot does not show plots in sourced function

I've been trying to draw two plots using R's ggplot library in RStudio. Problem is, when I draw two within one function, only the last one displays (in RStudio's "plots" view) and the first one disappears. Even worse, when I run ggsave() after each plot - which saves them to a file - neither of them appear (but the files save as expected). However, I want to view what I've saved in the plots as I was able to before.

Is there a way I can both display what I'll be plotting in RStudio's plots view and also save them? Moreover, when the plots are not being saved, why does the display problem happen when there's more than one plot? (i.e. why does it show the last one but not the ones before?)

The code with the plotting parts are below. I've removed some parts because they seem unnecessary (but can add them if they are indeed relevant).

HHIplot = ggplot(pergame)
# some ggplot geoms and misc. here  
ggsave(paste("HHI Index of all games,",year,"Finals.png"), 
  path = plotpath, width = 6, height = 4)

HHIAvePlot = ggplot(AveHHI, aes(x = AveHHI$n_brokers))
# some ggplot geoms and misc. here
ggsave(paste("Average HHI Index of all games,",year,"Finals.png"), 
  path = plotpath, width = 6, height = 4)

I've already taken a look here and here but neither have helped. Adding a print(HHIplot) or print(HHIAvePlot) after the ggsave() lines has not displayed the plot.

Many thanks in advance.

Update 1: The solution suggested below didn't work, although it works for the answer's sample code. I passed the ggplot objects to .Globalenv and print() gives me an empty gray box on the plot area (which I imagine is an empty ggplot object with no layers). I think the issue might lie in some of the layers or manipulators I have used, so I've brought the full code for one ggplot object below. Any thoughts? (Note: I've tried putting the assign() line in all possible locations in relation to ggsave() and ggplot().)

HHIplot = ggplot(pergame)
HHIplot +
  geom_point(aes(x = pergame$n_brokers, y = pergame$HHI)) +
  scale_y_continuous(limits = c(0,10000)) +
  scale_x_discrete(breaks = gameSizes) +
  labs(title = paste("HHI Index of all games,",year,"Finals"),
      x = "Game Size", y = "Herfindahl-Hirschman Index") +
  theme(text = element_text(size=15),axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 0, hjust = 1))
assign("HHIplot",HHIplot, envir = .GlobalEnv)
ggsave(paste("HHI Index of all games,",year,"Finals.png"),
  path = plotpath, width = 6, height = 4)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3168

Answers (1)

doicomehereoften1
doicomehereoften1

Reputation: 567

I'll preface this by saying that the following is bad practice. It's considered bad practice to break a programming language's scoping rules for something as trivial as this, but here's how it's done anyway.

So within the body of your function you'll create both plots and put them into variables. Then you'll use ggsave() to write them out. Finally, you'll use assign() to push the variables to the global scope.

library(ggplot2)
myFun <- function() {
    #some sample data that you should be passing into the function via arguments
    df <- data.frame(x=1:10, y1=1:10, y2=10:1)
    p1 <- ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y1))+geom_point()
    p2 <- ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y2))+geom_point()
    ggsave('p1.jpg', p1)
    ggsave('p2.jpg', p2)
    assign('p1', p1, envir=.GlobalEnv)
    assign('p2', p2, envir=.GlobalEnv)
    return()
}

Now, when you run myFun() it will write out your two plots to .jpg files, and also drop the plots into your global environment so that you can just run p1 or p2 on the console and they'll appear in RStudio's Plot pane.

ONCE AGAIN, THIS IS BAD PRACTICE

Good practice would be to not worry about the fact that they're not popping up in RStudio. They wrote out to files, and you know they did, so go look at them there.

Upvotes: 2

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