How do I combine two data frames one of which contains nested lists in R? - r

Question

Specifically, I'm trying to combine the two data frames UN_M.49_Countries and UN_M.49_Regions which contains the country codes in nested lists.
> UN_M.49_Countries
Code Name ISO_Alpha_3
1 004 Afghanistan AFG
2 248 Åland Islands ALA
3 008 Albania ALB
...
> UN_M.49_Regions
Code Name Parent Children Type
1 001 World 002, 019, 010, 142, 150, 009 Region
2 002 Africa 001 015, 202 Region
3 015 Northern Africa 002 012, 818, 434, 504, 729, 788, 732 Region
...
I would like to build a new table which adds two columns to UN_M.49_Countries.
> new_table
Code Name ISO_Alpha_3 Region Subregion
1 004 Afghanistan AFG Asia Southern Asia
2 248 Åland Islands ALA Europe Northern Europe
3 008 Albania ALB Europe Southern Europe
...
I am new to programming and R and, to be honest, I do not even know where to start. Any help would be much appreciated!
install.packages("ISOcodes")
library(ISOcodes)
UN_M.49_Countries
UN_M.49_Regions

Answer 1

if you need to get a specific version you can change Southern Europe to anything you would like, also if don't subset you can get the whole world.
Check out the package documentation.
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ISOcodes/ISOcodes.pdf
data("UN_M.49_Regions")
data("UN_M.49_Countries")
region <- subset(UN_M.49_Regions, Name == "Southern Europe")
codes <- unlist(strsplit(region$Children, ", "))
subset(UN_M.49_Countries, Code %in% codes)
Using the tidyverse
library(ISOcodes)
library(tidyverse)
library(stringr)
countries <- UN_M.49_Countries
regions <- UN_M.49_Regions
countries <- UN_M.49_Countries
region_focused <- regions %>%
mutate(codes = str_split(Children,",")) %>%
unnest() %>%
left_join(countries, by = c("codes" = "Code"))
countr_focused <- regions %>%
mutate(codes = str_split(Children,",")) %>%
unnest() %>%
right_join(countries, by = c("codes" = "Code"))