Create a sequence of dates and store in a data frame with a column name

Question

I think I am about to lose my mind!

I need to create a data frame of dates with a column name but I am struggling to figure it out.

I know I can assign the colnames outside of the dplyr chain using colnames(date_df) <- "DATE" but for my own learning I would like to understand if it's possible to do within the dplyr pipe/chain

library(tidyverse)
library(lubridate)

    date_df <- seq.Date(from = as.Date(today()- days(7)),
                        to = as.Date(today()),
                        by = "day") %>% 
      as.data.frame(col.names = c("DATE"))

Can someone please put me out of my misery and help me add a column name to this basic problem?

Maybe simply: data.frame(DATE = seq.Date(from = as.Date(today()- days(7)), to = as.Date(today()), by = "day")) — zx8754
– zx8754, Commented Apr 30, 2021 at 9:40
@zx8754 thank you, sometimes I feel like I'm going backwards in my familiarity with R. I feel like a jackass. — TheGoat
– TheGoat, Commented Apr 30, 2021 at 9:43
Posted as answer, sometimes we overcomplicate things, back to basics :) — zx8754
– zx8754, Commented Apr 30, 2021 at 9:49

Ronak Shah · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-30 09:40:01Z

4

There are lot of ways to do that, since you used data.frame :

library(lubridate)
library(magrittr)

seq.Date(from = as.Date(today()- days(7)),
        to = as.Date(today()),
        by = "day")  %>%
  data.frame(DATE = .)

#        DATE
#1 2021-04-23
#2 2021-04-24
#3 2021-04-25
#4 2021-04-26
#5 2021-04-27
#6 2021-04-28
#7 2021-04-29
#8 2021-04-30

answered Apr 30, 2021 at 9:40

Ronak Shah

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4 Comments

Konrad Rudolph Over a year ago

Why call seq.Date directly rather than via seq?

Ronak Shah Over a year ago

I just copied it from OP's attempt. Although curious any drawbacks with that?

zx8754 Over a year ago

@KonradRudolph probably, (like myself) copy pasted OP's code, which is not related to the problem anyway, but yes seq works fine, too.

Konrad Rudolph Over a year ago

@Ronak Ah, hadn’t noticed that. The predominant drawback is that it’s more code, and the added code is irrelevant: it doesn’t provide any informative detail. Furthermore, it makes the code non-generic; but of course this makes absolutely no difference in this specific code (but it makes it slightly harder to refactor into a reusable module later on). Nevertheless, I find it a good rule of thumb to keep code as generic as possible. Often this leads to cleaner algorithms and drastically increases reusability (and, thus, reuse).

zx8754 · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-30 09:46:11Z

3

Maybe simply:

data.frame(DATE = seq.Date(from = as.Date(today() - days(7)), 
                           to = as.Date(today()),
                           by = "day"))

answered Apr 30, 2021 at 9:46

zx8754

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