Using a For-loop to create multiple tables

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to use for-loops to create multiple tables in one go, all using the same dataset - I'll clarify that in a second. I'm using R Markdown, because I need to compile it in a PDF in the end, if that makes any difference.

So I'm working with one database and trying to separate it into multiple tables (using gt) based on the values of one of the variables. Let's say that my dataset is about towns' annual budgets.

data <- data.frame(x=1, y=1:15, z=16:30)
colnames(data) <- c("County", "Town", "Budget")
sample.space <- c(1:5)
number.samples <- 15
data$County <- sample(sample.space, number.samples, replace = TRUE)
sample.space2 <- c(2500:5000)
data$Budget <- sample(sample.space2, number.samples, replace = FALSE)

(Please excuse my somewhat clumsy creation, I don't often deal with random numbers these days.)

So what I'd like to do is create separate tables that show the annual budget for all the towns within County X. I've been able to do that just fine by creating new datasets for each county and then making a table from the new dataset. That's fine when you're only looking at 5 counties, but when it's 50, that gets to be a bit cumbersome.

I feel like there should be some way to do this using a for-loop. My gut instinct is to do it like this, but when I compile, nothing prints on the PDF.

library(gt)

for (i in 1:5) {
  data[data$County == i, ] %>%
    gt() %>%
    tab_header(
      title = "Annual Budget by County",
    ) 
}

If I pick a county and try the same thing without the loop, I have no problem.

data[data$County == 1, ] %>%
    gt() %>%
    tab_header(
      title = "Annual Budget for County 1",
    )

It's not the end of the world if I can't make it work, but I'm hoping someone more savvy than me can figure it out!

Thanks :)

Solution

It is just that in for loop the result is not stored based on the OP's code. We can create a NULL list of length 5 and update the list with the output based on the sequence looped

lst1 <- vector('list', 5)
for (i in 1:5) {
 lst1[[i]] <- data[data$County == i, ] %>%
    gt() %>%
    tab_header(
      title = "Annual Budget by County",
    ) 
}

If we want to create multiple objects, it is possible with assign but not recommended i.e. it is better to keep it in a list

Or another option is split by 'County' and loop with lapply to convert to gt

lst1 <- lapply(split(data, data$County), function(x) 
              gt(x) %>%
      tab_header(
      title = "Annual Budget by County",
    ) )