behead: Strip a level of headers from a pivot table

In unpivotr: Unpivot Complex and Irregular Data Layouts

Strip a level of headers from a pivot table

Description

behead() takes one level of headers from a pivot table and makes it part of the data. Think of it like tidyr::gather(), except that it works when there is more than one row of headers (or more than one column of row-headers), and it only works on tables that have first come through as_cells() or tidyxl::xlsx_cells().

Usage

behead(
  cells,
  direction,
  name,
  values = NULL,
  types = data_type,
  formatters = list(),
  drop_na = TRUE
)

behead_if(
  cells,
  ...,
  direction,
  name,
  values = NULL,
  types = data_type,
  formatters = list(),
  drop_na = TRUE
)

Arguments

cells	Data frame. The cells of a pivot table, usually the output of as_cells() or tidyxl::xlsx_cells(), or of a subsequent operation on those outputs.
direction	The direction between a data cell and its header, one of "up", "right", "down", "left", "up-left", "up-right", "right-up", "right-down", "down-right", "down-left", "left-down", "left-up". See ?direction. "up-ish", "down-ish", "left-ish" and "right-ish" aren't available because they require certain ambiguities that are better handled by using enhead() directly rather than via behead().
name	A name to give the new column that will be created, e.g. "location" if the headers are locations. Quoted ("location", not location) because it doesn't refer to an actual object.
values	Optional. The column of cells to use as the values of each header. Given as a bare variable name. If omitted (the default), the types argument will be used instead.
types	The name of the column that names the data type of each cell. Usually called data_types (the default), this is a character column that names the other columns in cells that contain the values of each cell. E.g. a cell with a character value will have "character" in this column. Unquoted(data_types, not "data_types") because it refers to an actual object.
formatters	A named list of functions for formatting each data type in a set of headers of mixed data types, e.g. when some headers are dates and others are characters. These can be given as character = toupper or character = ~ toupper(.x), similar to purrr::map.
drop_na	logical Whether to filter out headers that have NA in the value column. Default: TRUE. This can happen with the output of tidyxl::xlsx_cells(), when an empty cell exists because it has formatting applied to it, but should be ignored.
...	Passed to dplyr::filter. logical predicates defined in terms of the variables in .data. Multiple conditions are combined with &. Only rows where the condition evaluates to TRUE are kept. The arguments in ... are automatically quoted and evaluated in the context of the data frame. They support unquoting and splicing. See the dplyr vignette("programming") for an introduction to these concepts.

Value

A data frame

Examples

# A simple table with a row of headers
(x <- data.frame(a = 1:2, b = 3:4))

# Make a tidy representation of each cell
(cells <- as_cells(x, col_names = TRUE))

# Strip the cells in row 1 (the original headers) and use them as data
behead(cells, "N", foo)

# More complex example: pivot table with several layers of headers
(x <- purpose$`up-left left-up`)

# Make a tidy representation
cells <- as_cells(x)
head(cells)
tail(cells)

# Strip the headers and make them into data
tidy <-
  cells %>%
  behead("up-left", Sex) %>%
  behead("up", `Sense of purpose`) %>%
  behead("left-up", `Highest qualification`) %>%
  behead("left", `Age group (Life-stages)`) %>%
  dplyr::mutate(count = as.integer(chr)) %>%
  dplyr::select(-row, -col, -data_type, -chr)
head(tidy)

# Check against the provided 'tidy' version of the data.
dplyr::anti_join(tidy, purpose$Tidy)

# The provided 'tidy' data is missing a row for Male 15-24-year-olds with a
# postgraduate qualification and a sense of purpose between 0 and 6.  That
# seems to have been an oversight by Statistics New Zealand.

cells <- tibble::tribble(
       ~X1, ~adult, ~juvenile,
    "LION",    855,       677,
    "male",    496,       322,
  "female",    359,       355,
   "TIGER",    690,       324,
    "male",    381,       222,
  "female",    309,       102
  )
cells <- as_cells(cells, col_names = TRUE)

cells %>%
  behead_if(chr == toupper(chr), direction = "left-up", name = "species") %>%
  behead("left", "sex") %>%
  behead("up", "age") %>%
  dplyr::select(species, sex, age, population = dbl)

unpivotr documentation built on April 3, 2025, 6:01 p.m.