Having issues with bar chart x axis labels overlapping and spacing - r

Question

I need to essentially do a graph of x-axis (the date) and y-axis (volume sold) and have each day in a calendar year be represented.
Issues - first is the white space between dates. I tried to use factor(Date), but ran into issues when I wanted additional changes to the graph. The other issue, is the x-axis is currently by month. This looks fine. However, when I try to do it by day, I get ...
In short, it looks like a mess. Probably because I'm trying to put every date in at once. Below is my code as is.
ggplot(MyDataCSV, aes(x = Date, y = Volume)) +
geom_col(stat = "identity",
width = 0.9,
fill = "coral",
alpha = 0.5,
colour = "black",
position = "dodge") +
scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 day", labels = date_format("%m/%d")) +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1)) +
ggtitle("Volume Sold by Date") +
theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))
I'm a beginner to R, so I know this is beginner level, but I'm very confused. I have ggplot, tidyverse, dplyr, lubridate, and scales installed. Essentially, I want my labels on the x-axis to look like the first picture, except with every date in my data set (about a year)

Answer 1

One solution is to specify the dimensions of the saved figure, e.g.
# Load libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(lubridate)
# Generate a fake dataset (minimal reproducible example)
df <- data.frame(Date = seq.Date(from = ymd("2021-01-01"),
to = ymd("2021-12-31"),
by = "1 day"),
Volume = runif(365, 0, 4e+08))
# Plot the fake data
ggplot(df, aes(x = Date, y = Volume)) +
geom_col(stat = "identity",
width = 0.9,
fill = "coral",
alpha = 0.5,
colour = "black",
position = "dodge") +
scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 day", labels = scales::date_format("%m/%d")) +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1)) +
ggtitle("Volume Sold by Date") +
theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))
# Save the plot
ggsave(filename = "example_1.png", width = 60, height = 10, limitsize = FALSE)
Then, if you zoom in, you can see the dates don't overlap:
Otherwise, you could change the date_breaks to "1 month", or "1 week" to stop the dates overlapping whilst keeping a 'normal' figure size:
# Plot the fake data
ggplot(df, aes(x = Date, y = Volume)) +
geom_col(stat = "identity",
width = 0.9,
fill = "coral",
alpha = 0.5,
colour = "black",
position = "dodge") +
scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 week", labels = scales::date_format("%m/%d")) +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1)) +
ggtitle("Volume Sold by Date") +
theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5))
Or, the option that I would probably recommend, you could create facets by e.g. every 3 months:
# Load libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(lubridate)
# Generate a fake dataset (minimal reproducible example)
df <- data.frame(Date = seq.Date(from = ymd("2021-01-01"),
to = ymd("2021-12-31"),
by = "1 day"),
Volume = runif(365, 0, 4e+08))
plot_labels <- c(
"1" = "First Quarter, 2021",
"2" = "Second Quarter, 2021",
"3" = "Third Quarter, 2021",
"4" = "Fourth Quarter, 2021"
)
# Plot the fake data
df %>%
mutate(quarter = cut.Date(Date, breaks = "quarter", labels = FALSE)) %>%
ggplot(., aes(x = Date, y = Volume)) +
geom_col(stat = "identity",
width = 0.9,
fill = "coral",
alpha = 0.5,
colour = "black",
position = "dodge") +
scale_x_date(date_breaks = "1 day", labels = scales::date_format("%m/%d")) +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1)) +
ggtitle("Volume Sold by Date") +
theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) +
facet_wrap(~ quarter, ncol = 1, scales = "free_x",
labeller = labeller(quarter = plot_labels))