R creating a function using plyr revalue with multiple inputs - r

Question

I am new to R and just learning the ropes so thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.
I have a dataset that I am cleaning as a class project.
I have several sets of categorical data that I want to turn into specific numeric values.
I am repeating the same code format for different columns that I think would make a good function.
I would like to turn this:
# plyr using revalue
df$Area <- revalue(x = df$Area,
replace = c("rural" = 1,
"suburban" = 2,
"urban" = 3))
df$Area <- as.numeric(df$Area)
into this:
reval_3 <- function(data, columnX,
value1, num_val1,
value2, num_val2,
value3, num_val3) {
# plyr using revalue
data$columnX <- revalue(x = data$columnX,
replace = c(value1 = num_val1,
value2 = num_val2,
value3 = num_val3))
# set as numeric
data$columnX <- as.numeric(data$columnX)
# return dataset
return(data)
}
I get the following error:
The following `from` values were not present in `x`: value1, value2, value3
Error: Assigned data `as.numeric(data$columnX)` must be compatible with existing data.
x Existing data has 10000 rows.
x Assigned data has 0 rows.
ℹ Only vectors of size 1 are recycled.
Run `rlang::last_error()` to see where the error occurred.
In addition: Warning messages:
1: Unknown or uninitialised column: `columnX`.
I've tried it with a single value1 where value1 <- c("rural" = 1, "suburban" = 2, "urban" = 3)
I know I can just:
df$Area <- as.numeric(as.factor(df$Area))
the data but I want specific values for each choice rather than R choosing.
Any assistance appreciated.

Answer 1

As already mentioned by #MartinGal in his comment, plyr is retired and the package authors themselves recommend using dplyr instead. See https://github.com/hadley/plyr.
Hence, one option to achieve your desired result would be to make use of dplyr::recode. Additionally if you want to write your function I would suggest to pass the values to recode and the replacements as vectors instead of passing each value and replacement as separate arguments:
library(dplyr)
set.seed(42)
df <- data.frame(
Area = sample(c("rural", "suburban", "urban"), 10, replace = TRUE)
)
recode_table <- c("rural" = 1, "suburban" = 2, "urban" = 3)
recode(df$Area, !!!recode_table)
#> [1] 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 3 3
reval_3 <- function(data, x, values, replacements) {
recode_table <- setNames(replacements, values)
data[[x]] <- recode(data[[x]], !!!recode_table)
data
}
df <- reval_3(df, "Area", c("rural", "suburban", "urban"), 1:3)
df
#> Area
#> 1 1
#> 2 1
#> 3 1
#> 4 1
#> 5 2
#> 6 2
#> 7 2
#> 8 1
#> 9 3
#> 10 3

Answer 2

You can use case_when with across.
If the columns that you want to change are called col1, col2 you can do -
library(dplyr)
df <- df %>%
mutate(across(c(col1, col2), ~case_when(. == 'rural' ~ 1,
. == 'suburban' ~ 2,
. == 'urban' ~ 3)))
Based on your actual column names you can also pass starts_with, ends_with, range of columns A:Z in across.