Plot simple time axis for events

Question

I'm looking for a solution to plot a time axis where events are marked as red vertical lines. I didn't find anything like that:

(the height of the red lines should be equal)

The data is just a list of unix timestamps which should be plotted as red strings between a timespan.

How to plot using ggplot?

Answer 1

First, here are some sample dates:

sampleDates <-
  sample(seq(as.Date("2016-01-01")
             , as.Date("2016-12-31")
             , 1)
         , 60)

Then, here is an extension of the starting point from @zx8754's comment (note: mtcars is a builtin data set). Here, I add an arrow (instead of just a line), then use geom_linerange because you can get a vertical line in the legend, e.g., if you are coloring lines by event type. Everything from theme_minimal down is just shifting display options to make it prettier.

ggplot() +
  geom_segment(
    aes(x = min(sampleDates) - 10
        , xend = max(sampleDates) + 20
        , y = 0
        , yend = 0)
    , arrow = arrow()
  ) +
  geom_linerange(
    aes(x = sampleDates
        , ymin = -1
        , ymax = 1)
    , col = "red") +
  xlab("Sample Date") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(axis.text.y = element_blank()
        , axis.title.y = element_blank()
        , panel.grid.major.y = element_blank()
        , panel.grid.minor.y = element_blank()
        ) +
  scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 month"
               , date_labels = "%Y\n%b-%d")