s_dplyr.R

# Helper functions that allow string arguments for  dplyr's data modification functions like arrange, select etc. 
# Author: Sebastian Kranz

# Examples are below

#' Modified version of dplyr's filter that uses string arguments
#' @export
s_filter = function(.data, ...) {
  eval.string.dplyr(.data,"filter", ...)
}

#' Modified version of dplyr's select that uses string arguments
#' @export
s_select = function(.data, ...) {
  eval.string.dplyr(.data,"select", ...)
}

#' Modified version of dplyr's arrange that uses string arguments
#' @export
s_arrange = function(.data, ...) {
  eval.string.dplyr(.data,"arrange", ...)
}

#' Modified version of dplyr's arrange that uses string arguments
#' @export
s_mutate = function(.data, ...) {
  eval.string.dplyr(.data,"mutate", ...)
}

#' Modified version of dplyr's summarise that uses string arguments
#' @export
s_summarise = function(.data, ...) {
  eval.string.dplyr(.data,"summarise", ...)
}

#' Modified version of dplyr's group_by that uses string arguments
#' @export
s_group_by = function(.data, ...) {
  eval.string.dplyr(.data,"group_by", ...)
}

#' Internal function used by s_filter, s_select etc.
eval.string.dplyr = function(.data, .fun.name, ...) {
  args = list(...)
  args = unlist(args)
  code = paste0(.fun.name,"(.data,", paste0(args, collapse=","), ")")
  df = eval(parse(text=code,srcfile=NULL))
  df  
}

# Examples
#library(dplyr)

# Original usage of dplyr
#mtcars %.%
#  filter(gear == 3,cyl == 8) %.%  
#  select(mpg, cyl, hp:vs)

# Select user specified cols.
# Note that you can have a vector of strings
# or a single string separated by ',' or a mixture of both
#cols = c("mpg","cyl, hp:vs")
#mtcars %.%
#  filter(gear == 3,cyl == 8) %.%  
#  s_select(cols)

# Filter using a string
#col = "gear"
#mtcars %.%
#  s_filter(paste0(col,"==3"), "cyl==8" ) %.%
#  select(mpg, cyl, hp:vs)

# Arrange without using %.%
#s_arrange(mtcars, "-mpg, gear, carb")

# group_by and summarise with strings
#mtcars %.%
#  s_group_by("cyl") %.%  
#  s_summarise("mean(disp), max(disp)")

Thanks for putting the .R on so I can source_gist it!