How could you supply multiple series to a line chart in R shiny using highcharter package and without hardcoding the series?

Question

I'm trying to create a line chart using highcharts package with a time series dataframe that is similar to this one:

reprexDF <- data.frame(category = c("apples","oranges","bananas","limes"),
                          month1 = c(5,8,10,2),
                          month2 = c(NA,7,2,3),
                          month3 = c(NA, NA, 10,2),
                          month4 = c(11,12,5,9)
                          )

I want each row to be a separate line on the line chart that shows the trend for each category across months, all plotted on the same chart.

I tried parsing each row into a list with:

reprexDF <- highcharter::list_parse2(reprexDf)

and then attempting to plot with:

highchart() %>%
hc_plotOptions(line = list(marker = list(enabled = FALSE)))%>%
hc_add_series_list(reprexDF) 

but I'm still not being able to plot this data.

I just really want to avoid having to hard code each series because the lists are supposed to be dynamic.

Answer 1

Would first convert your data frame to long. Then you can group_by category and use list_parse2 to make lists by category.

For this plot, I made sure month was numeric on x-axis. I renamed category to name so it would show up in legend and labels. And added connectNulls in case you wanted to connect points across missing values (NA).

library(highcharter)
library(tidyverse)

reprexDF2 <- reprexDF %>%
  pivot_longer(cols = -category, names_to = "month", values_to = "value", names_pattern = "month(\\d)$") %>%
  group_by(category) %>%
  do(data = list_parse2(data.frame(as.numeric(.$month), .$value))) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  rename(name = category)

highchart() %>%
  hc_plotOptions(series = list(connectNulls = TRUE), line = list(marker = list(enabled = FALSE)))%>%
  hc_add_series_list(reprexDF2)