[r] Reshaping data.frame from wide to long format

I have some trouble to convert my data.frame from a wide table to a long table. At the moment it looks like this:

Code Country        1950    1951    1952    1953    1954
AFG  Afghanistan    20,249  21,352  22,532  23,557  24,555
ALB  Albania        8,097   8,986   10,058  11,123  12,246

Now I would like to transform this data.frame into a long data.frame. Something like this:

Code Country        Year    Value
AFG  Afghanistan    1950    20,249
AFG  Afghanistan    1951    21,352
AFG  Afghanistan    1952    22,532
AFG  Afghanistan    1953    23,557
AFG  Afghanistan    1954    24,555
ALB  Albania        1950    8,097
ALB  Albania        1951    8,986
ALB  Albania        1952    10,058
ALB  Albania        1953    11,123
ALB  Albania        1954    12,246

I have looked at and already tried using the melt() and the reshape() functions as some people were suggesting in similar questions. However, so far I only get messy results.

If it is possible I would like to do it with the reshape() function since it looks a little bit nicer to handle.

You can also use the cdata package, which uses the concept of (transformation) control table:

# data
wide <- read.table(text="Code Country        1950    1951    1952    1953    1954
AFG  Afghanistan    20,249  21,352  22,532  23,557  24,555
ALB  Albania        8,097   8,986   10,058  11,123  12,246", header=TRUE, check.names=FALSE)

library(cdata)
# build control table
drec <- data.frame(
    Year=as.character(1950:1954),
    Value=as.character(1950:1954),
    stringsAsFactors=FALSE
)
drec <- cdata::rowrecs_to_blocks_spec(drec, recordKeys=c("Code", "Country"))

# apply control table
cdata::layout_by(drec, wide)

I am currently exploring that package and find it quite accessible. It is designed for much more complicated transformations and includes the backtransformation. There is a tutorial available.

Here is another example showing the use of gather from tidyr. You can select the columns to gather either by removing them individually (as I do here), or by including the years you want explicitly.

Note that, to handle the commas (and X's added if check.names = FALSE is not set), I am also using dplyr's mutate with parse_number from readr to convert the text values back to numbers. These are all part of the tidyverse and so can be loaded together with library(tidyverse)

wide %>%
  gather(Year, Value, -Code, -Country) %>%
  mutate(Year = parse_number(Year)
         , Value = parse_number(Value))

Returns:

   Code     Country Year Value
1   AFG Afghanistan 1950 20249
2   ALB     Albania 1950  8097
3   AFG Afghanistan 1951 21352
4   ALB     Albania 1951  8986
5   AFG Afghanistan 1952 22532
6   ALB     Albania 1952 10058
7   AFG Afghanistan 1953 23557
8   ALB     Albania 1953 11123
9   AFG Afghanistan 1954 24555
10  ALB     Albania 1954 12246

Since this answer is tagged with r-faq, I felt it would be useful to share another alternative from base R: stack.

Note, however, that stack does not work with factors--it only works if is.vector is TRUE, and from the documentation for is.vector, we find that:

is.vector returns TRUE if x is a vector of the specified mode having no attributes other than names. It returns FALSE otherwise.

I'm using the sample data from @Jaap's answer, where the values in the year columns are factors.

Here's the stack approach:

cbind(wide[1:2], stack(lapply(wide[-c(1, 2)], as.character)))
##    Code     Country values  ind
## 1   AFG Afghanistan 20,249 1950
## 2   ALB     Albania  8,097 1950
## 3   AFG Afghanistan 21,352 1951
## 4   ALB     Albania  8,986 1951
## 5   AFG Afghanistan 22,532 1952
## 6   ALB     Albania 10,058 1952
## 7   AFG Afghanistan 23,557 1953
## 8   ALB     Albania 11,123 1953
## 9   AFG Afghanistan 24,555 1954
## 10  ALB     Albania 12,246 1954

you can also see many examples in R cookbook

olddata_wide <- read.table(header=TRUE, text='
 subject sex control cond1 cond2
       1   M     7.9  12.3  10.7
       2   F     6.3  10.6  11.1
       3   F     9.5  13.1  13.8
       4   M    11.5  13.4  12.9
')
# Make sure the subject column is a factor
olddata_wide$subject <- factor(olddata_wide$subject)
olddata_long <- read.table(header=TRUE, text='
 subject sex condition measurement
       1   M   control         7.9
       1   M     cond1        12.3
       1   M     cond2        10.7
       2   F   control         6.3
       2   F     cond1        10.6
       2   F     cond2        11.1
       3   F   control         9.5
       3   F     cond1        13.1
       3   F     cond2        13.8
       4   M   control        11.5
       4   M     cond1        13.4
       4   M     cond2        12.9
')
# Make sure the subject column is a factor
olddata_long$subject <- factor(olddata_long$subject)

With tidyr_1.0.0, another option is pivot_longer

library(tidyr)
pivot_longer(df1, -c(Code, Country), values_to = "Value", names_to = "Year")
# A tibble: 10 x 4
#   Code  Country     Year  Value 
#   <fct> <fct>       <chr> <fct> 
# 1 AFG   Afghanistan 1950  20,249
# 2 AFG   Afghanistan 1951  21,352
# 3 AFG   Afghanistan 1952  22,532
# 4 AFG   Afghanistan 1953  23,557
# 5 AFG   Afghanistan 1954  24,555
# 6 ALB   Albania     1950  8,097 
# 7 ALB   Albania     1951  8,986 
# 8 ALB   Albania     1952  10,058
# 9 ALB   Albania     1953  11,123
#10 ALB   Albania     1954  12,246

data

df1 <- structure(list(Code = structure(1:2, .Label = c("AFG", "ALB"), class = "factor"), 
    Country = structure(1:2, .Label = c("Afghanistan", "Albania"
    ), class = "factor"), `1950` = structure(1:2, .Label = c("20,249", 
    "8,097"), class = "factor"), `1951` = structure(1:2, .Label = c("21,352", 
    "8,986"), class = "factor"), `1952` = structure(2:1, .Label = c("10,058", 
    "22,532"), class = "factor"), `1953` = structure(2:1, .Label = c("11,123", 
    "23,557"), class = "factor"), `1954` = structure(2:1, .Label = c("12,246", 
    "24,555"), class = "factor")), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, 
-2L))

Three alternative solutions:

1) With data.table:

You can use the same melt function as in the reshape2 package (which is an extended & improved implementation). melt from data.table has also more parameters that the melt-function from reshape2. You can for example also specify the name of the variable-column:

library(data.table)
long <- melt(setDT(wide), id.vars = c("Code","Country"), variable.name = "year")

which gives:

> long
    Code     Country year  value
 1:  AFG Afghanistan 1950 20,249
 2:  ALB     Albania 1950  8,097
 3:  AFG Afghanistan 1951 21,352
 4:  ALB     Albania 1951  8,986
 5:  AFG Afghanistan 1952 22,532
 6:  ALB     Albania 1952 10,058
 7:  AFG Afghanistan 1953 23,557
 8:  ALB     Albania 1953 11,123
 9:  AFG Afghanistan 1954 24,555
10:  ALB     Albania 1954 12,246

Some alternative notations:

melt(setDT(wide), id.vars = 1:2, variable.name = "year")
melt(setDT(wide), measure.vars = 3:7, variable.name = "year")
melt(setDT(wide), measure.vars = as.character(1950:1954), variable.name = "year")

2) With tidyr:

library(tidyr)
long <- wide %>% gather(year, value, -c(Code, Country))

Some alternative notations:

wide %>% gather(year, value, -Code, -Country)
wide %>% gather(year, value, -1:-2)
wide %>% gather(year, value, -(1:2))
wide %>% gather(year, value, -1, -2)
wide %>% gather(year, value, 3:7)
wide %>% gather(year, value, `1950`:`1954`)

3) With reshape2:

library(reshape2)
long <- melt(wide, id.vars = c("Code", "Country"))

Some alternative notations that give the same result:

# you can also define the id-variables by column number
melt(wide, id.vars = 1:2)

# as an alternative you can also specify the measure-variables
# all other variables will then be used as id-variables
melt(wide, measure.vars = 3:7)
melt(wide, measure.vars = as.character(1950:1954))

NOTES:

• reshape2 is retired. Only changes necessary to keep it on CRAN will be made. (source)
• If you want to exclude NA values, you can add na.rm = TRUE to the melt as well as the gather functions.

Another problem with the data is that the values will be read by R as character-values (as a result of the , in the numbers). You can repair that with gsub and as.numeric:

long$value <- as.numeric(gsub(",", "", long$value))

Or directly with data.table or dplyr:

# data.table
long <- melt(setDT(wide),
             id.vars = c("Code","Country"),
             variable.name = "year")[, value := as.numeric(gsub(",", "", value))]

# tidyr and dplyr
long <- wide %>% gather(year, value, -c(Code,Country)) %>% 
  mutate(value = as.numeric(gsub(",", "", value)))

Data:

wide <- read.table(text="Code Country        1950    1951    1952    1953    1954
AFG  Afghanistan    20,249  21,352  22,532  23,557  24,555
ALB  Albania        8,097   8,986   10,058  11,123  12,246", header=TRUE, check.names=FALSE)

Using reshape package:

#data
x <- read.table(textConnection(
"Code Country        1950    1951    1952    1953    1954
AFG  Afghanistan    20,249  21,352  22,532  23,557  24,555
ALB  Albania        8,097   8,986   10,058  11,123  12,246"), header=TRUE)

library(reshape)

x2 <- melt(x, id = c("Code", "Country"), variable_name = "Year")
x2[,"Year"] <- as.numeric(gsub("X", "" , x2[,"Year"]))

Here's a sqldf solution:

sqldf("Select Code, Country, '1950' As Year, `1950` As Value From wide
        Union All
       Select Code, Country, '1951' As Year, `1951` As Value From wide
        Union All
       Select Code, Country, '1952' As Year, `1952` As Value From wide
        Union All
       Select Code, Country, '1953' As Year, `1953` As Value From wide
        Union All
       Select Code, Country, '1954' As Year, `1954` As Value From wide;")

To make the query without typing in everything, you can use the following:

^{Thanks to G. Grothendieck for implementing it.}

ValCol <- tail(names(wide), -2)

s <- sprintf("Select Code, Country, '%s' As Year, `%s` As Value from wide", ValCol, ValCol)
mquery <- paste(s, collapse = "\n Union All\n")

cat(mquery) #just to show the query
 #> Select Code, Country, '1950' As Year, `1950` As Value from wide
 #>  Union All
 #> Select Code, Country, '1951' As Year, `1951` As Value from wide
 #>  Union All
 #> Select Code, Country, '1952' As Year, `1952` As Value from wide
 #>  Union All
 #> Select Code, Country, '1953' As Year, `1953` As Value from wide
 #>  Union All
 #> Select Code, Country, '1954' As Year, `1954` As Value from wide

sqldf(mquery)

 #>    Code     Country Year  Value
 #> 1   AFG Afghanistan 1950 20,249
 #> 2   ALB     Albania 1950  8,097
 #> 3   AFG Afghanistan 1951 21,352
 #> 4   ALB     Albania 1951  8,986
 #> 5   AFG Afghanistan 1952 22,532
 #> 6   ALB     Albania 1952 10,058
 #> 7   AFG Afghanistan 1953 23,557
 #> 8   ALB     Albania 1953 11,123
 #> 9   AFG Afghanistan 1954 24,555
 #> 10  ALB     Albania 1954 12,246

Unfortunately, I don't think that PIVOT and UNPIVOT would work for R SQLite. If you want to write up your query in a more sophisticated manner, you can also take a look at these posts:

Using sprintf writing up sql queries   Or    Pass variables to sqldf