R – Add panel border to ggplot2

ggplot2plotr

I have been asked to place a full border around my plot below:

enter image description here

Using panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black") results in losing in the plot becoming blank.

I can't use theme_bw() as it does not have the same functionality as the usual theme, the code I am currently using is below:

graph<-ggplot(d,aes(x=d$AOE, y=d$MEI)
            )+
  geom_point(shape=20, size=3)+
  geom_rug()+
  annotate("text", x = -1.1, y = 14000, label = "27/04/2011") +
  annotate("text", x = -1.3, y = 10400, label = "03/04/1974") +
  xlab("MEI")+
  ylab("AOE")+
  scale_y_log10()+
  theme(axis.text.y   = element_text(size=14),
        axis.text.x   = element_text(size=14),
        axis.title.y  = element_text(size=14),
        axis.title.x  = element_text(size=14),
        panel.background = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major = element_blank(), 
        panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
        axis.line = element_line(colour = "black")
  )

graph

Any advice on how to get a full black border would be very much appreciated!

Best Answer

To use panel.border you also have to specify a blank fill using fill=NA.

Try this:

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, disp)) + geom_point() + geom_rug() +
  theme(axis.text.y   = element_text(size=14),
        axis.text.x   = element_text(size=14),
        axis.title.y  = element_text(size=14),
        axis.title.x  = element_text(size=14),
        panel.background = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major = element_blank(), 
        panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
        axis.line = element_line(colour = "black"),
        panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill=NA, size=5)
  )

enter image description here

Any ggplots side-by-side (or n plots on a grid)

The function grid.arrange() in the gridExtra package will combine multiple plots; this is how you put two side by side.

require(gridExtra)
plot1 <- qplot(1)
plot2 <- qplot(1)
grid.arrange(plot1, plot2, ncol=2)

This is useful when the two plots are not based on the same data, for example if you want to plot different variables without using reshape().

This will plot the output as a side effect. To print the side effect to a file, specify a device driver (such as pdf, png, etc), e.g.

pdf("foo.pdf")
grid.arrange(plot1, plot2)
dev.off()

or, use arrangeGrob() in combination with ggsave(),

ggsave("foo.pdf", arrangeGrob(plot1, plot2))

This is the equivalent of making two distinct plots using par(mfrow = c(1,2)). This not only saves time arranging data, it is necessary when you want two dissimilar plots.

Appendix: Using Facets

Facets are helpful for making similar plots for different groups. This is pointed out below in many answers below, but I want to highlight this approach with examples equivalent to the above plots.

mydata <- data.frame(myGroup = c('a', 'b'), myX = c(1,1))

qplot(data = mydata, 
    x = myX, 
    facets = ~myGroup)

ggplot(data = mydata) + 
    geom_bar(aes(myX)) + 
    facet_wrap(~myGroup)

Update

the plot_grid function in the cowplot is worth checking out as an alternative to grid.arrange. See the answer by @claus-wilke below and this vignette for an equivalent approach; but the function allows finer controls on plot location and size, based on this vignette.

Rotating and spacing axis labels in ggplot2

Change the last line to

q + theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, vjust = 0.5, hjust=1))

By default, the axes are aligned at the center of the text, even when rotated. When you rotate +/- 90 degrees, you usually want it to be aligned at the edge instead:

alt text

The image above is from this blog post.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

R – Side-by-side plots with ggplot2

Any ggplots side-by-side (or n plots on a grid)

Appendix: Using Facets

Update

Rotating and spacing axis labels in ggplot2

Related Topic