mixtime provides flexible time classes for time series analysis and forecasting with mixed temporal granularities. It is designed for handling temporal data at different frequencies, making it ideal for:
📈 Linear Time - Create linear time vectors with
linear_time() or with helpers:
year(), yearquarter(),
yearmonth(), yearweek(), date(),
datetime()🔄 Cyclical Time - Create cyclical time vectors with
cyclical_time() or with helpers:
month_of_year(), day_of_year(),
day_of_month(), time_of_day(),
day_of_week(), week_of_year()⏳ Time durations - Create time duration vectors
with duration() or with helpers:
years(), quarters(),
months(), weeks(), days(),
hours(), minutes(), seconds(),
milliseconds()🕰️ Time types
week(2L) for
fortnights)📅 Calendar Systems - Support for several calendars:
cal_gregorian - Gregorian dates (e.g. 2026-02-17)cal_isoweek - ISO week dates (e.g. 2026-W8-Tue)cal_sym454 - Symmetry454 dates
(e.g. 2026-Feb-W4-Tue)🧮 Temporal Operations
time_floor(), time_round(),
time_ceiling()seq() for linear and cyclical time
pointsThe mixtime package can be installed from CRAN with:
install.packages("mixtime")The development version can be installed from GitHub with:
# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("mitchelloharawild/mixtime")library(mixtime)
#>
#> Attaching package: 'mixtime'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#>
#> date, months, quarters
demo_time <- as.POSIXct("2026-02-22 18:30:42", tz = "UTC")
demo_date <- as.Date("2026-02-22")The mixtime package is designed around the time units of calendars. These time units are used to create and manipulate time vectors.
Calendars have a cal_* prefix, which contain a set of
time units that can be accessed with
<cal>$<unit>. Using time units as functions
produces time granules.
# The Gregorian calendar
cal_gregorian
#> <cal_gregorian>
#> Time units:
#> - year
#> - quarter
#> - month
#> - day
#> - ampm
#> - hour
#> - minute
#> - second
#> - millisecond
# A 1-month time granule
cal_gregorian$month(1L) # (1L is integer 1)
#> <mixtime::tu_month>
#> @ n : int 1
#> @ tz: chr ""
# A 2-week time granule (fortnights)
cal_isoweek$week(2L)
#> <mixtime::tu_week>
#> @ n : int 2
#> @ tz: chr ""A linear time vector uses time granules to define the resolution of
time points, known as a chronon (the smallest granules of
time). When the input time has a different resolution than the
chronon, it will be automatically converted.
linear_time(demo_date, chronon = cal_gregorian$month(1L))
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] 2026 FebDiscrete time models (integer-based values) are used by default,
however continuous time models (double-based values) can be used with
discrete = FALSE to allow fractional chronons.
# February 22nd is 75% through the month (in non-leap years)
linear_time(demo_date, chronon = cal_gregorian$month(1L), discrete = FALSE)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] 2026 Feb 75.0%Linear time helper functions are available to quickly create common time points.
# Create time vectors at different granularities
yearquarter(demo_date) + 0:7
#> <mixtime[8]>
#> [1] 2026 Q1 2026 Q2 2026 Q3 2026 Q4 2027 Q1 2027 Q2 2027 Q3 2027 Q4
yearmonth(demo_date) + 0:11
#> <mixtime[12]>
#> [1] 2026 Feb 2026 Mar 2026 Apr 2026 May 2026 Jun 2026 Jul 2026 Aug 2026 Sep
#> [9] 2026 Oct 2026 Nov 2026 Dec 2027 Jan
yearweek(demo_date) + 0:10
#> <mixtime[11]>
#> [1] 2026 W08 2026 W09 2026 W10 2026 W11 2026 W12 2026 W13 2026 W14 2026 W15
#> [9] 2026 W16 2026 W17 2026 W18
date(demo_date) + 0:6
#> <mixtime[7]>
#> [1] 2026-02-22 2026-02-23 2026-02-24 2026-02-25 2026-02-26 2026-02-27 2026-02-28The mixtime package allows time of different granulities to be combined in a single vector.
c(
year(demo_date), yearquarter(demo_date),
yearmonth(demo_date), yearweek(demo_date)
)
#> <mixtime[4]>
#> [1] 2026 2026 Q1 2026 Feb 2026 W08A cyclical time vector is defined by two time granules: a
chronon (the smaller granule of time) and a
cycle (the larger granule that the chronon
loops over).
# The `calendar` argument provides a masking scope to `chronon` and `cycle`
cyclical_time(demo_date, chronon = day(1L), cycle = week(1L), calendar = cal_isoweek)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] SunThere are several cyclical time helper functions for convenience.
# Extract cyclical components
month_of_year(demo_date)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] Feb
week_of_year(demo_date)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] W08
day_of_week(demo_date)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] Sun
# Continuous cyclical time shows progress through chronons
day_of_week(demo_time, discrete = FALSE)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] Sun 77.1%All linear and cyclical time vectors support timezones via the
tz argument.
demo_time
#> [1] "2026-02-22 18:30:42 UTC"
# Same day (Sunday) in LA
date(demo_time, tz = "America/Los_Angeles")
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] 2026-02-22 PST
date(demo_time, tz = "America/Los_Angeles", discrete = FALSE)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] 2026-02-22 PST 43.8%
day_of_week(demo_time, tz = "America/Los_Angeles")
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] Sun PST
# Next day (Monday) in Melbourne (23% through the 23rd)
date(demo_time, tz = "Australia/Melbourne")
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] 2026-02-23 AEDT
date(demo_time, tz = "Australia/Melbourne", discrete = FALSE)
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] 2026-02-23 AEDT 23.0%
day_of_week(demo_time, tz = "Australia/Melbourne")
#> <mixtime[1]>
#> [1] Mon AEDTLinear time points can be adjusted to the floor, ceiling, or rounded to a specified time granule.
# Round dates to different granularities
time_floor(demo_date, cal_gregorian$month(1L))
#> [1] "2026-02-01"
time_round(demo_date, cal_isoweek$week(1L))
#> [1] "2026-02-23"
time_ceiling(demo_date, cal_gregorian$month(1L))
#> [1] "2026-03-01"The seq() function creates sequences of time points
iterating by a given time granule.
# Integer increments (advances by chronon's natural granule)
seq(yearmonth(demo_date), by = 1L, length.out = 10)
#> <mixtime[10]>
#> [1] 2026 Feb 2026 Mar 2026 Apr 2026 May 2026 Jun 2026 Jul 2026 Aug 2026 Sep
#> [9] 2026 Oct 2026 Nov
# Time can be sequenced by different granules than the chronon
seq(date(demo_date), by = cal_gregorian$month(1L), length.out = 8)
#> <mixtime[8]>
#> [1] 2026-02-22 2026-03-22 2026-04-22 2026-05-22 2026-06-22 2026-07-22 2026-08-22
#> [8] 2026-09-22