add set_labels to clean_names()

DESCRIPTION

@@ -8,7 +8,8 @@ Authors@R: c(
     person("Ryan", "Knight", , "[email protected]", role = "ctb"),
     person("Malte", "Grosser", , "[email protected]", role = "ctb"),
     person("Jonathan", "Zadra", , "[email protected]", role = "ctb"),
-    person("Olivier", "Roy", role = "ctb")
+    person("Olivier", "Roy", role = "ctb"),
+    person("Josep", family = "Pueyo-Ros", email = "[email protected]", role = "ctb")
   )
 Description: The main janitor functions can: perfectly format data.frame
     column names; provide quick counts of variable combinations (i.e.,

NEWS.md

@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@ These are all minor breaking changes resulting from enhancements and are not exp
 
 * The new function `excel_time_to_numeric()` converts times from Excel that do not have accompanying dates into a number of seconds.  (#245, thanks to **@billdenney** for the feature.)
 
+* A new argument `set_labels` to `clean_names()` stores the old names as labels in each column. Variable labels are visualized in Rstudio's data viewer or used by default by some packages such as `gt` instead of variable names. Labels can also be used in ggplot labels thanks to the function `easy_labs()` in the `ggeasy` package. Read this wonderful [post](https://www.pipinghotdata.com/posts/2022-09-13-the-case-for-variable-labels-in-r/) for more info about column labels. (#563, thanks to **@jospueyo** for the feature).
+
 ## Bug fixes
 
 * `adorn_totals("row")` now succeeds if the new `name` of the totals row is already a factor level of the input data.frame (#529, thanks @egozoglu for reporting).

R/clean_names.R

@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
 #' (characters) to "u".
 #'
 #' @param dat The input `data.frame`.
+#' @param set_labels If set to `TRUE`, old names are stored as labels in each column of the returned data.frame.
 #' @inheritDotParams make_clean_names -string
 #' @return A `data.frame` with clean names.
 #'
@@ -32,7 +33,8 @@
 #'   support using `clean_names()` on `sf` and `tbl_graph` (from
 #'   `tidygraph`) objects as well as on database connections through
 #'   `dbplyr`. For cleaning other named objects like named lists
-#'   and vectors, use `make_clean_names()`.
+#'   and vectors, use `make_clean_names()`. When `set_labels` is set to `TRUE`, the old names, 
+#'   stored as column labels, can be restored using `sjlabelled::label_to_colnames()`.
 #'
 #' @export
 #' @family Set names
@@ -71,7 +73,7 @@ clean_names <- function(dat, ...) {
 
 #' @rdname clean_names
 #' @export
-clean_names.default <- function(dat, ...) {
+clean_names.default <- function(dat, ..., set_labels = FALSE) {
   if (is.null(names(dat)) && is.null(dimnames(dat))) {
     stop(
       "`clean_names()` requires that either names or dimnames be non-null.",
@@ -81,14 +83,21 @@ clean_names.default <- function(dat, ...) {
   if (is.null(names(dat))) {
     dimnames(dat) <- lapply(dimnames(dat), make_clean_names, ...)
   } else {
+    if (set_labels){
+      old_names <- names(dat)
+      for (i in seq_along(old_names)){
+        attr(dat[[i]], "label") <- old_names[[i]]
+      }
+    }
     names(dat) <- make_clean_names(names(dat), ...)
+
   }
   dat
 }
 
 #' @rdname clean_names
 #' @export
-clean_names.sf <- function(dat, ...) {
+clean_names.sf <- function(dat, ..., set_labels = FALSE) {
   if (!requireNamespace("sf", quietly = TRUE)) { # nocov start
     stop(
       "Package 'sf' needed for this function to work. Please install it.",
@@ -103,6 +112,12 @@ clean_names.sf <- function(dat, ...) {
   sf_cleaned <- make_clean_names(sf_names[1:n_cols], ...)
   # rename original df
   names(dat)[1:n_cols] <- sf_cleaned
+
+  if(set_labels){
+    for (i in seq_along(sf_names[1:n_cols])){
+      attr(dat[[i]], "label") <- sf_names[[i]]
+    }
+  }
 
   return(dat)
 }
@@ -116,6 +131,7 @@ clean_names.tbl_graph <- function(dat, ...) {
       call. = FALSE
     )
   } # nocov end
+
   dplyr::rename_all(dat, .funs = make_clean_names, ...)
 }
 

tests/testthat/test-clean-names.R

@@ -186,6 +186,22 @@ test_that("do not create duplicates (fix #251)", {
   )
 })
 
+test_that("labels are created in default method (feature request #563)", {
+  dat_df <- dplyr::tibble(`a a` = c(11, 22), `b b` = c(2, 3))
+  dat_df_clean_labels <- clean_names(dat_df, set_labels = TRUE)
+  dat_df_clean <- clean_names(dat_df)
+
+  for (i in seq_along(names(dat_df))){
+    # check that old names are saved as labels when set_labels is TRUE
+    expect_equal(attr(dat_df_clean_labels[[i]], "label"), names(dat_df)[[i]])
+    # check that old names are not stored if set_labels is not TRUE
+    expect_null(attr(dat_df_clean[[i]], "label"))
+    }
+
+  # expect names are always cleaned
+  expect_equal(names(dat_df_clean), c("a_a", "b_b"))
+  expect_equal(names(dat_df_clean_labels), c("a_a", "b_b"))
+})
 
 test_that("allow for duplicates (fix #495)", {
   expect_equal(
@@ -578,6 +594,30 @@ test_that("Tests for cases beyond default snake for sf objects", {
   )
 })
 
+test_that("labels are created in sf method (feature request #563)", {
+  skip_if_not_installed("sf")
+
+  dat_df <- dplyr::tibble(`a a` = c(11, 22), `b b` = c(2, 3))
+  dat_sf <- dat_df
+  dat_sf$x <- c(1,2)
+  dat_sf$y <- c(1,2) 
+  dat_sf <- sf::st_as_sf(dat_sf, coords = c("x", "y"))
+  dat_sf_clean_labels <- clean_names(dat_sf, set_labels = TRUE)
+  dat_sf_clean <- clean_names(dat_sf)
+
+  for (i in seq_along(names(dat_df))){
+    # check that old names are saved as labels when set_labels is TRUE
+    expect_equal(attr(dat_sf_clean_labels[[i]], "label"), names(dat_sf)[[i]])
+
+    # check that old names are not stored if set_labels is not TRUE
+    expect_null(attr(dat_sf_clean[[i]], "label"))
+  }
+  # expect names are always cleaned
+  expect_equal(names(dat_sf_clean), c("a_a", "b_b", "geometry"))
+  expect_equal(names(dat_sf_clean_labels), c("a_a", "b_b", "geometry"))
+})
+
+
 #------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
 #------------------------ Tests for tbl_graph method --------------------------#####
 #------------------------------------------------------------------------------#