rk.dates: An RKWard Plugin for Date/Time Conversion

This package provides a single, powerful RKWard plugin designed to convert various numeric and character representations of dates and times into R's standard POSIXct (date-time) format. It simplifies the often-tricky process of handling date/time data imported from other statistical software or sources.

Features

The plugin provides a unified interface with the following capabilities, available under the Data -> Dates and Times -> Convert to R Date-Time menu in RKWard:

• Support for External Formats: Directly convert numeric date/time values from common external sources, including:
  • Excel: Reliably handles numeric dates using the openxlsx package.
  • SPSS: Correctly converts numbers representing seconds since October 14, 1582.
  • Stata: Correctly converts numbers representing milliseconds since January 1, 1960.
  • SAS: Correctly converts numbers representing seconds since January 1, 1960.
• Clear Options for R's Native Types:
  • Promote R's Date objects (date-only) to full POSIXct objects (date with time).
  • Handle standard, unambiguous character strings (e.g., "2025-11-21 15:30:00").
• Interactive Data Preview: A Preview button allows you to see the result of the conversion before you click "Submit," ensuring you have selected the correct origin format for your data.
• User-Friendly Workflow: A simple dropdown menu removes the need to remember the complex origin dates and time units (seconds vs. milliseconds) required for manual conversion in R code.

🌍 Internationalization

The interface is fully localized to match your RKWard language settings:

• 🇺🇸 English (Default)
• 🇪🇸 Spanish (es)
• 🇫🇷 French (fr)
• 🇩🇪 German (de)
• 🇧🇷 Portuguese (Brazil) (pt_BR)

Installation

Requirements

• A working installation of RKWard.
• The R packages openxlsx and devtools (or remotes).

Recommended Method: From GitHub

The easiest way to install the plugin is using R's devtools or remotes package.

# If you don't have devtools or the required dependency, install them first:
# install.packages(c("devtools", "openxlsx"))

devtools::install_github("AlfCano/rk.dates")

After installation, restart RKWard, and the new menu entry will be available.

Usage Example: Converting Excel Numeric Dates

This example demonstrates how to convert a column of numeric dates (as they are often imported or pasted from Excel) into a proper R date-time format.

1. Prepare Sample Data First, create a sample data frame. The Hora.de.inicio and Hora.de.finalización columns contain numbers that represent date-times in Excel. Run this code in the RKWard console:

dates <- data.frame(
  Hora.de.inicio = c(45238.42586, 45238.4259, 45238.42586, 45238.42672),
  Hora.de.finalización = c(45238.43712, 45238.43788, 45238.44131, 45238.44304)
)

You will now have a data frame named dates in your workspace.

2. Open the Plugin Go to the RKWard menu: Data -> Dates and Times -> Convert to R Date-Time.

3. Configure the Dialog

• Data vector to convert: From the object selector list on the left, choose dates$Hora.de.inicio.
• Original format of the data: From the dropdown menu, select Excel (numeric).
• Save result as: start_time_posix.

4. Preview the Result (Optional) Click the Preview button. A new pane will appear showing the converted date-times. For the first value (45238.42586), it should show something like 2023-11-10 10:13:14. This confirms your settings are correct.

5. Submit Click the Submit button. A new object named start_time_posix will be created in your workspace.

6. Verify the Result (Optional) To confirm the new object is in the correct format, you can run the str() function in the R console:

str(start_time_posix)

The output will show that it is a POSIXct object, which can now be used for time-based calculations and plotting.

Author and License

• Author: Alfonso Cano Robles, assisted by Gemini a LLM from Google.
• Email: alfonso.cano@correo.buap.mx
• License: GPL (>= 3)