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highdir is an R package that provides a unified, backend-agnostic API for building figures with either highcharter (interactive) or ggplot2 (static).

The package provides two complementary yet fully interoperable APIs for creating figures:

  1. Declarative API - define all components of a figure up front and render it in a single step.
  2. Layered API - incrementally compose a figure by adding layers, similar to the grammar of graphics.

Both APIs produce equivalent visual output and can target any supported backend without changes to the calling code.

With the declarative API, a figure is specified once as an hd_spec object and can later be rendered to different backends. Backend-specific presentation options (such as interactivity or styling tweaks) can be supplied separately via an hc_opts object prior to rendering.

The layered API supports an exploratory, iterative workflow. Figures are built step by step using + similar to ggplot2 style, making this approach particularly well suited for interactive analysis and rapid prototyping, while remaining backend-independent.

By default, highdir ships with colour palette, theme, and visual identity of The Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet). To further enhance usability, a Shiny graphical user interfacef for building and previewing figures is also included as part of the package.

Installation

# Install from GitHub
if(!require(remotes)) install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("folkehelsestats/highdir")

# Install from development version (dev branch)
remotes::install_github("folkehelsestats/highdir@dev")

Get started

The simplest way to get started with highdir is by using the built-in Shiny app. It shows also codes to demonstrate how to use the package programmatically in R. Start the app with:

library(highdir)
hd_app()

The app is also available directly through ShinyApps.io at: https://bit.ly/highdir

Supported geometries

Name highcharter type ggplot2 equivalent Extra args
column column geom_col() —
ranked_bar column geom_col() vs, aim, char_scale, min_frac
line line / spline geom_line() smooth, dot_size, line_symbols
scatter scatter geom_point() dot_size
arearange arearange geom_ribbon() ymin, ymax
pie pie geom_bar(), coord_polar() inner_size
stacked_column column geom_bar(), facet_wrap() stack, stacking

To see complete list of extra arguments for specify geoms use geom_args() function:

geom_args("ranked_bar")
geom_args("arearange")

License

MIT © Kamaleri