unpivotr provides tools for converting data from complex or irregular layouts to a columnar structure. For example, tables with multi-level column or row headers, or spreadsheets. Header and data cells are selected by their contents, position and formatting, and are associated with one other by their relative positions.
Excel (.xlsx) files can be prepared for unpivotr via the tidyxl package.
For bugs and/or issues, create a new issue on GitHub For other questions or comments, please subscribe to the tidyxl-devel mailing list. You must be a member to post messages, but anyone can read the archived discussions.
devtools::install_github("nacnudus/unpivotr", build_vignettes = TRUE)There are several dependencies:
- data.table (>= 1.9.7)
- dplyr
- dtplyr
- purrr
- tidyr
The package includes a dataset, purpose, which is a list of pivot tables, derived from a survey by Statistics New Zealand of people's sense-of-purpose. A 'tidy' version of the data is also included.
library(unpivotr)
#>
#> Attaching package: 'unpivotr'
#> The following object is masked from 'package:stats':
#>
#> offset
head(purpose$Tidy) # 'Tidy' version of the data
#> Sex Age group (Life-stages) Highest qualification Sense of purpose
#> 1 Male 15 - 24 No Qualification 0 - 6
#> 2 Male 15 - 24 No Qualification 7 - 10
#> 3 Male 15 - 24 Certificate 0 - 6
#> 4 Male 15 - 24 Certificate 7 - 10
#> 5 Male 15 - 24 Diploma 0 - 6
#> 6 Male 15 - 24 Diploma 7 - 10
#> Value Flags
#> 1 12000 <NA>
#> 2 37000 <NA>
#> 3 30000 <NA>
#> 4 190000 <NA>
#> 5 9000 *
#> 6 11000 *
(pivoted <- purpose$`NNW WNW`) # The same data, pivoted
#> X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7
#> 1 <NA> <NA> Female <NA> Male <NA>
#> 2 <NA> <NA> 0 - 6 7 - 10 0 - 6 7 - 10
#> 3 Bachelor's degree 15 - 24 7000 27000 <NA> 13000
#> 4 <NA> 25 - 44 12000 137000 9000 81000
#> 5 <NA> 45 - 64 10000 64000 7000 66000
#> 6 <NA> 65+ <NA> 18000 7000 17000
#> 7 Certificate 15 - 24 29000 161000 30000 190000
#> 8 <NA> 25 - 44 34000 179000 31000 219000
#> 9 <NA> 45 - 64 30000 210000 23000 199000
#> 10 <NA> 65+ 12000 77000 8000 107000
#> 11 Diploma 15 - 24 <NA> 14000 9000 11000
#> 12 <NA> 25 - 44 10000 66000 8000 47000
#> 13 <NA> 45 - 64 6000 68000 5000 58000
#> 14 <NA> 65+ 5000 41000 1000 34000
#> 15 No Qualification 15 - 24 10000 43000 12000 37000
#> 16 <NA> 25 - 44 11000 36000 21000 50000
#> 17 <NA> 45 - 64 19000 91000 17000 75000
#> 18 <NA> 65+ 16000 118000 9000 66000
#> 19 Postgraduate qualification 15 - 24 <NA> 6000 <NA> <NA>
#> 20 <NA> 25 - 44 5000 86000 7000 60000
#> 21 <NA> 45 - 64 6000 55000 6000 68000
#> 22 <NA> 65+ <NA> 13000 <NA> 18000To unpivot this table, first get a tabular representation of each cell, its value and its position in the original pivot table.
cells <- tidytable(pivoted, colnames = FALSE)
cells <- cells[!is.na(cells$character), ]
head(cells)
#> row col character double integer logical
#> 3 3 1 Bachelor's degree NA NA NA
#> 7 7 1 Certificate NA NA NA
#> 11 11 1 Diploma NA NA NA
#> 15 15 1 No Qualification NA NA NA
#> 19 19 1 Postgraduate qualification NA NA NA
#> 25 3 2 15 - 24 NA NA NAThis can easily be subset for header and data cells.
library(dplyr)
#>
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#>
#> filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#>
#> intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
# Select the cells containing the values
datacells <-
cells %>%
filter(row >= 3, col >= 3)
head(datacells)
#> row col character double integer logical
#> 1 3 3 7000 NA NA NA
#> 2 4 3 12000 NA NA NA
#> 3 5 3 10000 NA NA NA
#> 4 7 3 29000 NA NA NA
#> 5 8 3 34000 NA NA NA
#> 6 9 3 30000 NA NA NA
# Select the row headers
row_headers <-
cells %>%
filter(col <= 2) %>%
select(row, col, header = character) %>%
split(.$col) # Separate each column of headers
lapply(row_headers, head)
#> $`1`
#> row col header
#> 1 3 1 Bachelor's degree
#> 2 7 1 Certificate
#> 3 11 1 Diploma
#> 4 15 1 No Qualification
#> 5 19 1 Postgraduate qualification
#>
#> $`2`
#> row col header
#> 6 3 2 15 - 24
#> 7 4 2 25 - 44
#> 8 5 2 45 - 64
#> 9 6 2 65+
#> 10 7 2 15 - 24
#> 11 8 2 25 - 44
# Select the column headers
col_headers <-
cells %>%
filter(row <= 2) %>%
select(row, col, header = character) %>%
split(.$row) # Separate each row of headers
col_headers
#> $`1`
#> row col header
#> 1 1 3 Female
#> 4 1 5 Male
#>
#> $`2`
#> row col header
#> 2 2 3 0 - 6
#> 3 2 4 7 - 10
#> 5 2 5 0 - 6
#> 6 2 6 7 - 10Using unpivotr functions, we associate the data cells with the headers, by proximity in given compass directions.
# From each data cell, search for the nearest one of each of the headers
unpivoted <-
datacells %>%
NNW(col_headers$`1`) %>% # Search north (up) and north-west (up-left)
N(col_headers$`2`) %>% # Search directly north (up)
WNW(row_headers$`1`) %>% # Search west (left) and north-west
W(row_headers$`2`) # Search directly left (west)
unpivoted
#> # A tibble: 72 × 10
#> row col character double integer logical header.data header.header
#> <int> <int> <chr> <dbl> <int> <lgl> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 3 3 7000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 2 4 3 12000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 3 5 3 10000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 4 7 3 29000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 5 8 3 34000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 6 9 3 30000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 7 10 3 12000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 8 12 3 10000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 9 13 3 6000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> 10 14 3 5000 NA NA NA Female 0 - 6
#> # ... with 62 more rows, and 2 more variables: header.data.data <chr>,
#> # header.header.header <chr>We can re-pivot the final data in R using ftable() to check that it has been imported correctly.
ftable(unpivoted[7:10],
row.vars = 3:4,
col.vars = 1:2)
#> header.data Female Male
#> header.header 0 - 6 7 - 10 0 - 6 7 - 10
#> header.data.data header.header.header
#> Bachelor's degree 15 - 24 1 1 0 1
#> 25 - 44 1 1 1 1
#> 45 - 64 1 1 1 1
#> 65+ 0 1 1 1
#> Certificate 15 - 24 1 1 1 1
#> 25 - 44 1 1 1 1
#> 45 - 64 1 1 1 1
#> 65+ 1 1 1 1
#> Diploma 15 - 24 0 1 1 1
#> 25 - 44 1 1 1 1
#> 45 - 64 1 1 1 1
#> 65+ 1 1 1 1
#> No Qualification 15 - 24 1 1 1 1
#> 25 - 44 1 1 1 1
#> 45 - 64 1 1 1 1
#> 65+ 1 1 1 1
#> Postgraduate qualification 15 - 24 0 1 0 0
#> 25 - 44 1 1 1 1
#> 45 - 64 1 1 1 1
#> 65+ 0 1 0 1The concept of compass directions is compactly expressed by this triptych.
The most useful ones are more fully explained here.
A complete explanation is in 'poster' form here.
Information in in many spreadsheets cannot be easily imported into R. Why?
Most R packages that import spreadsheets have difficulty unless the layout of the spreadsheet conforms to a strict definition of a 'table', e.g.:
- observations in rows
- variables in columns
- a single header row
- all information represented by characters, whether textual, logical, or numeric
These rules are designed to eliminate ambiguity in the interpretation of the information. But most spreadsheeting software relaxes these rules in a trade of ambiguity for expression via other media:
- proximity (other than headers, i.e. other than being the first value at the top of a column)
- formatting (colours and borders)
Humans can usually resolve the ambiguities with contextual knowledge, but computers are limited by their ignorance. Programmers are hampered by:
- their language's expressiveness
- loss of information in transfer from spreadsheet to programming library
Information is lost when software discards it in order to force the data into tabular form. Sometimes date formatting is retained, but mostly formatting and comments are lost, and position has to be inferred.
unpivotr is inspired by the United Kingdom Office of National Statistics ONSdatabaker, which is implemented in Python. unpivotr differs already by using compass directions and searching for headers between boundaries.
The rsheets project of several R packages is in the early stages of importing spreadsheet information from Excel and Google Sheets into R, manipulating it, and potentially parsing and processing formulas and writing out to spreadsheet files. In particular, jailbreaker attempts to extract non-tabular data from spreadsheets into tabular structures automatically via some clever algorithms.
unpivotr differs from jailbreaker in that it provides tools for unpivoting complex and non-tabular data layouts using I not AI (intelligence, not artificial intelligence).
As common unpivoting idioms emerge, they will be generalised and added to the package. E.g. combining long header titles that are spelled out across cells, rather than being in one cell merged across others.