How to get SVG string from R ggplot image?

Question

In R, suppose I have a ggplot object like p below from a tutorial:

library(ggplot2)
data <- data.frame(
        day = as.Date("2017-06-14") - 0:364,
        value = runif(365) + seq(-140, 224)^2 / 10000
)
p <- ggplot(data, aes(x=day, y=value)) +
        geom_line() +
        xlab("")

I don't want to see the image, and I don't want to save it to a file. What I would like is to get a string that is the SVG for this image without doing either of those things. Is that possible?

Answer 1

You can use svglite::svgstring():

library(ggplot2)
library(svglite)

data <- data.frame(
  day = as.Date("2017-06-14") - 0:364,
  value = runif(365) + seq(-140, 224)^2 / 10000
)

s <- svgstring()

ggplot(data, aes(x=day, y=value)) +
  geom_line() +
  xlab("")

my_svg <- s()
dev.off()

Where my_svg is a string containing:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' xmlns:xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink' class='svglite' width='720.00pt' height='576.00pt' viewBox='0 0 720.00 576.00'>
<defs>
  <style type='text/css'><![CDATA[
    .svglite line, .svglite polyline, .svglite polygon, .svglite path, .svglite rect, .svglite circle {
      fill: none;
      stroke: #000000;
      stroke-linecap: round;
      stroke-linejoin: round;
      stroke-miterlimit: 10.00;
    }
    .svglite text {
      white-space: pre;
    }
  ]]></style>
...