nest_join: Nest Join

In poorman: A Poor Man's Dependency Free Recreation of 'dplyr'

Nest Join

Description

nest_join() keeps every row and column of x and adds one list column. Each element of that column is a data.frame holding the rows of y whose keys match the row of x. A row of x without a match in y gets a data.frame with zero rows.

Usage

nest_join(x, y, by = NULL, copy = FALSE, keep = FALSE, name = NULL, ...)

Arguments

x, y	The data.frames to join.
by	A character vector naming the key columns. With NULL, the default, the keys are every column name that x and y share, and a message reports them; pass by yourself to silence the message. Name the elements of by when the keys have different names in the two tables: by = c("a" = "b") pairs column a of x with column b of y. by = character() uses no keys, so every row of x is paired with the whole of y.
copy	Ignored. Included for compatibility with dplyr, where it allows y to come from a different data source.
keep	logical(1). Should the key columns of y also appear in the nested data.frames?
name	character(1). The name of the new list column. With NULL, the default, the column is named after the expression passed as y, abbreviated as the automatic names of summarise().
...	Ignored. Included for compatibility with dplyr.

Details

As rows of x are never dropped or repeated, the result always has as many rows as x. The other joins can be built on top of it. Counting the rows of each nested data.frame tells you which rows semi_join() and anti_join() would keep, and expanding the nested rows back out gives the result of inner_join() or, if the empty matches become missing values, left_join().

Value

A data.frame with the rows and columns of x and a list column, name, of data.frames. The join keys of x are coerced to the common type of the keys in x and y. Groups are taken from x.

Examples

customers <- data.frame(id = 1:3, customer = c("Ana", "Ben", "Chloe"))
orders <- data.frame(id = c(1L, 1L, 3L, 4L), item = c("tea", "jam", "bread", "milk"))

# Ben (id 2) has no orders, so gets a zero row data.frame
res <- nest_join(customers, orders, by = "id")
res$orders

# Keep the key column in the nested data and choose the column name
nest_join(customers, orders, by = "id", keep = TRUE, name = "purchases")$purchases

# Counting the orders of each customer gives semi_join() and anti_join()
n_orders <- vapply(res$orders, nrow, integer(1L))
res[n_orders > 0L, c("id", "customer")]  # semi_join(customers, orders, by = "id")
res[n_orders == 0L, c("id", "customer")] # anti_join(customers, orders, by = "id")

# Expanding the orders back out gives inner_join()
expand_matches <- function(x, nested) {
  n <- vapply(nested, nrow, integer(1L))
  cbind(x[rep(seq_len(nrow(x)), n), , drop = FALSE], do.call(rbind, nested), row.names = NULL)
}
expand_matches(res[c("id", "customer")], res$orders) # inner_join(customers, orders, by = "id")

# and left_join() once each empty match becomes a row of missing values
filled <- lapply(
  res$orders,
  function(o) if (nrow(o) == 0L) o[NA_integer_, , drop = FALSE] else o
)
expand_matches(res[c("id", "customer")], filled) # left_join(customers, orders, by = "id")

poorman documentation built on Oct. 29, 2026, 1:07 a.m.