Skip to contents

Harmonize Two Data Frames by Column Structure

Source: R/assimilate_data.R
assimilate_data.Rd

Adds missing columns (filled with `NA`) to a secondary data frame so that its column set and order match a reference data frame. This is useful when combining data frames from different sources that should have the same structure but may be missing some columns.

Usage

assimilate_data(data_a, data_b)

Arguments

data_a

Data frame. Reference data frame whose column structure should be matched.

data_b

Data frame. Data frame to be conformed to `data_a`.

Value

Data frame `data_b` with added missing columns (NA-filled) and reordered to match `data_a`.

Examples

# Create reference data frame
pdata_a <- data.frame(
  A = 1:5, B = 2:6, C = 3:7, D = 4:8, E = 5:9
)

# Create data frame with subset of columns
pdata_b <- data.frame(A = 1:3, C = 4:6, E = 7:9)

# Harmonize pdata_b to match pdata_a structure
pdata_b_harmonized <- assimilate_data(data_a = pdata_a, data_b = pdata_b)
#> ℹ Adding 2 missing columns: "B" and "D"
print(names(pdata_b_harmonized)) # Now has A, B, C, D, E
#> [1] "A" "B" "C" "D" "E"