ggplot plots within a table - r

Question

Problem
I would like to produce a good looking table which has ggplots within the cells of one column. One key element is that I would like to create a pdf output of this table eventually.
What I have tried so far
Hopefully the example below is understandable. Essentially I found that I can achieve what I want using the gt package. The problem is this creates a html widget which you then have to use phantomJS and webshot to export as a pdf.
library(dplyr)
library(purrr)
library(gt)
library(ggplot2)
dat = tibble(
RowLabel = letters[1:5],
Numeric = seq(100,500,100)
) %>%
mutate(
plotData = RowLabel %>% map(function(pos){
tibble(y=runif(10)*100) %>%
arrange(desc(y)) %>%
mutate(x=row_number())
}),
plot_obj = plotData %>% map(function(df){
df %>%
ggplot(aes(x=x,y=y))+
geom_col()
}),
plot_grob = plot_obj %>% map(cowplot::as_grob)
)
tab = dat %>%
select(RowLabel, Numeric) %>%
mutate(
ggplot = NA
) %>%
gt() %>%
text_transform(
locations = cells_body(vars(ggplot)),
fn = function(x) {
dat$plot_obj %>%
map(ggplot_image, height = px(50))
}
)
tab
What do I want
I would like an output which is similar to the above example. However, I would like a solution which does not require me to use html widgets and can be saved directly as a pdf without the use of other programs. Is this possible to do using ggplot? I have started to learn more about grids/grobs/gtables etc but have not made any meaningful progress.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Perhaps you could tweak the gtsave() function to suit? E.g.
library(dplyr)
library(purrr)
library(gt)
library(ggplot2)
dat = tibble(
RowLabel = letters[1:5],
Numeric = seq(100,500,100)
) %>%
mutate(
plotData = RowLabel %>% map(function(pos){
tibble(y=runif(10)*100) %>%
arrange(desc(y)) %>%
mutate(x=row_number())
}),
plot_obj = plotData %>% map(function(df){
df %>%
ggplot(aes(x=x,y=y))+
geom_col()
}),
plot_grob = plot_obj %>% map(cowplot::as_grob)
)
tab = dat %>%
select(RowLabel, Numeric) %>%
mutate(
ggplot = NA
) %>%
gt() %>%
text_transform(
locations = cells_body(vars(ggplot)),
fn = function(x) {
dat$plot_obj %>%
map(ggplot_image, height = px(50))
}
)
tab %>%
gt::gtsave(filename = "test.pdf", vwidth = 180, vheight = 250)
(R v4.0.3 / gt v0.2.2)