[r] Tools for making latex tables in R

I have a few tricks and work arounds to interesting 'features' of xtable and Latex that I'll share here.

Trick #1: Removing Duplicates in Columns and Trick #2: Using Booktabs

First, load packages and define my clean function

<<label=first, include=FALSE, echo=FALSE>>= 
    library(xtable)
    library(plyr)

    cleanf <- function(x){     
        oldx <- c(FALSE, x[-1]==x[-length(x)])  
        # is the value equal to the previous?    
        res <- x
        res[oldx] <- NA
        return(res)} 

Now generate some fake data

data<-data.frame(animal=sample(c("elephant", "dog", "cat", "fish", "snake"), 100,replace=TRUE),
            colour=sample(c("red", "blue", "green", "yellow"), 100,replace=TRUE),
            size=rnorm(100,mean=500, sd=150),
            age=rlnorm(100, meanlog=3, sdlog=0.5))

    #generate a table
    datatable<-ddply(data, .(animal, colour), function(df) {
                return(data.frame(size=mean(df$size), age=mean(df$age)))
            })

Now we can generate a table, and use the clean function to remove duplicate entries in the label columns.

cleandata<-datatable
cleandata$animal<-cleanf(cleandata$animal)
cleandata$colour<-cleanf(cleandata$colour)
@ 

this is a normal xtable

<<label=normal, results=tex, echo=FALSE>>=
print(
    xtable(
        datatable
        ),
        tabular.environment='longtable',
        latex.environments=c("center"), 
        floating=FALSE, 
        include.rownames=FALSE
    )
@ 

this is a normal xtable where a custom function has turned duplicates to NA

<<label=cleandata, results=tex, echo=FALSE>>=
print(
    xtable(
        cleandata
        ),
        tabular.environment='longtable',
        latex.environments=c("center"), 
        floating=FALSE, 
        include.rownames=FALSE
    )
@ 

This table uses the booktab package (and needs a \usepackage{booktabs} in the headers)

\begin{table}[!h] 
        \centering
        \caption{table using booktabs.}
        \label{tab:mytable}
<<label=booktabs, echo=F,results=tex>>= 
            mat <- xtable(cleandata,digits=rep(2,ncol(cleandata)+1))
            foo<-0:(length(mat$animal))
            bar<-foo[!is.na(mat$animal)]
            print(mat, 
                  sanitize.text.function = function(x){x},
                  floating=FALSE,
                  include.rownames=FALSE,
                  hline.after=NULL, 
                  add.to.row=list(pos=list(-1,bar,nrow(mat)), 
                  command=c("\\toprule ", "\\midrule ", "\\bottomrule ")))
  #could extend this with \cmidrule to have a partial line over
  #a sub category column and \addlinespace to add space before a total row
@