The vtable package serves the purpose of outputting
automatic variable documentation that can be easily viewed while
continuing to work with data.
vtable contains four main functions:
vtable() (or vt()), sumtable()
(or st()), labeltable(), and
dftoHTML()/dftoLaTeX(). This vignette focuses
on dftoHTML()/dftoLaTeX().
dftoHTML() and dftoLaTeX are helper
functions used by vtable(), sumtable(), and
labeltable(). They takes any data frame or matrix with
column names and outputs HTML or LaTeX table code for that data.
Note that none of the vignettes in this example are set to run
because dftoHTML and dftoLaTeX output is
intended to go to places other than Markdown (although both can
certainly be used with ‘asis’ chunks to produce results in
Markdown).
dftoHTML() functiondftoHTML() syntax follows the following outline:
dftoHTML(data,
out=NA,
file=NA,
note=NA,
anchor=NA,
col.width=NA,
col.align=NA,
row.names=FALSE,
no.escape=NA)dftoHTML() largely exists to serve
vtable(), sumtable(), and
labeltable(). What it does is takes a data set
data and returns an HTML table with the contents of that
data.
Outside of its use with other vtable functions,
dftoHTML() can also be used to keep a view of the data file
open while working on the data, avoiding repeated calls to
head() or similar, or switching back and forth between code
tabs and data view tabs.
datadftoHTML() will accept any data set with a
colnames() attribute.
library(vtable)
data(LifeCycleSavings)
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings)The out option determines what will be done with the
resulting variable documentation file. There are several options for
out:
| Option | Result |
|---|---|
| browser | Loads HTML version of data in web browser. |
| viewer | Loads HTML version of data in Viewer pane (RStudio
only). |
| htmlreturn | Returns HTML code for data. |
By default, vtable will select ‘viewer’ if running in
RStudio, and ‘browser’ otherwise.
library(vtable)
data(LifeCycleSavings)
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings)
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,out='browser')
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,out='viewer')
htmlcode <- dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,out='htmlreturn')fileThe file argument will write the HTML version of
data to an HTML file and save it. Will automatically append
‘html’ filetype if the filename does not include a period.
data(LifeCycleSavings)
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,file='lifecycledata_htmlversion.html')notenote will add a table note in the last row.
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,note='Data from Belsley, Kuh, and Welsch 1980').anchoranchor will add an anchor ID (<a name =)
to allow other parts of your document to link to it, if you are
including your table in a larger document.
col.widthdftoHTML() will select, by default, equal column widths
for all columns in data. col.width, as a
vector of percentage column widths on the 0-100 scale, will override
these defaults.
#Let's make sr much bigger for some reason
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,col.width=c(60,10,10,10,10))col.aligncol.align can be used to adjust text alignment in HTML
output. Set to ‘left’, ‘right’, or ‘center’ to align all columns, or
give a vector of column alignments to do each column separately.
While this is not intended usage, you can add additional CSS
arguments (i.e. 'left; padding:5px') and it will apply that
CSS to every cell in the column.
row.namesThe row.names flag determines whether the row names of
the data are included as the first column in the output table.
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,row.names=TRUE)no.escapeIf the data passed to dftoHTML() contains special HTML
characters like ‘<’, dftoHTML() will escape them. This
could cause you some sort of existential crisis if you wanted to put
HTML formatting in your data to be displayed. So set
no.escape to a vector of column indices to skip the
character-escaping process for those columns.
#Don't escape columns 1 or 2
dftoHTML(LifeCycleSavings,no.escape=1:2)dftoLaTeX() functiondftoLaTeX() syntax follows the following outline:
dftoLaTeX(data,
file=NA,
frag=TRUE,
title=NA,
note=NA,
anchor=NA,
align=NA,
row.names=FALSE,
no.escape=NA)dftoLaTeX() largely exists to serve
vtable(), sumtable(), and
labeltable(). What it does is takes a data set
data and returns an LaTeX table with the contents of that
data. You could also use it on its own to write any data frame to LaTeX
table format.
datadftoLaTeX() will accept any data set with a
colnames() attribute.
library(vtable)
data(LifeCycleSavings)
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings)fileThe file argument will write the TeX version of
data to a .tex file and save it. Will automatically append
‘tex’ filetype if the filename does not include a period.
data(LifeCycleSavings)
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings,file='lifecycledata_latexversion.tex')notenote will add a table note in the last row.
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings,note='Data from Belsley, Kuh, and Welsch 1980').anchoranchor will add an anchor ID (\label{}) to
allow other parts of your document to link to it, if you are including
your output in a larger document.
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings,anchor='tab:LCS')alignThis is a single string, which will be used as column alignment in standard LaTeX syntax, for example ‘lccc’ for the left column left-aligned and the other three centered. Accepts ‘p{}’ and other LaTeX column types. Don’t forget to escape backslashes!
Defaults to all left-aligned.
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings,row.names=TRUE,align='p{.25\\textwidth}ccccc')row.namesThe row.names flag determines whether the row names of
the data are included as the first column in the output table.
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings,row.names=TRUE)no.escapeIf the data passed to dftoLaTeX() contains special HTML
characters like ‘~’ or ‘^’, dftoLaTeX() will escape them.
This could cause you some sort of existential crisis if you wanted to
put LaTeX formatting in your data to be displayed. So set
no.escape to a vector of column indices to skip the
character-escaping process for those columns.
#Don't escape columns 1 or 2
dftoLaTeX(LifeCycleSavings,no.escape=1:2)