16

First, let's start with DataFrame 1 (DF1) :

DF1 <- data.frame(c("06/19/2016", "06/20/2016", "06/21/2016", "06/22/2016", 
                    "06/23/2016", "06/19/2016", "06/20/2016", "06/21/2016",
                    "06/22/2016", "06/23/2016"),
                  c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2),
                  c(149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 84, 83, 80, 81, 97),
                  c(101, 102, 104, 107, 99, 55, 55, 56, 57, 58),
                  c("MTL", "MTL", "MTL", "MTL", "MTL", "NY", "NY", 
                    "NY", "NY", "NY"))
colnames(DF1) <- c("date", "id", "sales", "cost", "city")

I also have DataFrame 2 (DF2) :

DF2 <- data.frame(c("06/19/2016", "06/27/2016", "06/22/2016", "06/23/2016"),
                  c(1, 1, 2, 2),
                  c(9999, 8888, 777, 555),
                  c("LON", "LON", "QC", "QC"))
colnames(DF2) <- c("date", "id", "sales", "city")

For every rows in DF1, I have to look if there is a row in DF2 that has the same date and id. If yes, I have to replace the values in DF1 by the values in DF2.

DF2 will always have less columns than DF1. If a column is not in DF2, I must keep the original value that was in DF1 for that specific column.

The final output would like this:

results <- data.frame(c("06/19/2016", "06/20/2016", "06/21/2016", "06/22/2016",
                        "06/23/2016", "06/19/2016", "06/20/2016", "06/21/2016",
                        "06/22/2016", "06/23/2016"),
                      c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2),
                      c(9999, 150, 151, 152, 155, 84, 83, 80, 777, 555),
                      c(101, 102, 104, 107, 99, 55, 55, 56, 57, 58),
                      c("LON", "MTL", "MTL", "MTL", "MTL", "NY", "NY", 
                        "NY", "QC", "QC"))
colnames(results) <- c("date", "id", "sales", "cost", "city")

Do you have any suggestions?

Jaap
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Alexis
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3 Answers3

33

You could use the join functionality of the -package for this:

library(data.table)
setDT(DF1)
setDT(DF2)

DF1[DF2, on = .(date, id), `:=` (city = i.city, sales = i.sales)]

which gives:

> DF1
          date id sales cost city
 1: 06/19/2016  1  9999  101  LON
 2: 06/20/2016  1   150  102  MTL
 3: 06/21/2016  1   151  104  MTL
 4: 06/22/2016  1   152  107  MTL
 5: 06/23/2016  1   155   99  MTL
 6: 06/19/2016  2    84   55   NY
 7: 06/20/2016  2    83   55   NY
 8: 06/21/2016  2    80   56   NY
 9: 06/22/2016  2   777   57   QC
10: 06/23/2016  2   555   58   QC

When you have many columns in both datasets, it is easier to use mget instead off typing all the column names. For the used data in the question it would look like:

DF1[DF2, on = .(date, id), names(DF2)[3:4] := mget(paste0("i.", names(DF2)[3:4]))]

When you want to construct a vector of columnnames that need to be added beforehand, you could do this as follows:

cols <- names(DF2)[3:4]
DF1[DF2, on = .(date, id), (cols) := mget(paste0("i.", cols))]
Jaap
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  • In the real dataset, DF1 has 416 columns and DF2 has 321 columns – Alexis Jun 23 '16 at 14:29
  • If I try the mget strategy, but doing it in two steps, why do I get an error? `cols <-names(DF2)[3:4]` and `DF1[DF2, on = .(date, id),cols := mget(paste0("i.", cols))]` Thanks – rt.l Dec 04 '19 at 00:03
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    @t.r you need to put `cols` between `()`; see the update of my answer – Jaap Dec 04 '19 at 06:59
2
df <- merge(DF1, DF2, by = c("date", "id"), all.x=TRUE)

tmp1 <- df[is.na(df$sales.y) & is.na(df$city.y),]
tmp1$sales.y <- NULL
tmp1$city.y <- NULL
names(tmp1)[names(tmp1) == "sales.x"] <- "sales"
names(tmp1)[names(tmp1) == "city.x"] <- "city"

tmp2 <- df[!is.na(df$sales.y) & !is.na(df$city.y),]
tmp2$sales.x <- NULL
tmp2$city.x <- NULL
names(tmp2)[names(tmp2) == "sales.y"] <- "sales"
names(tmp2)[names(tmp2) == "city.y"] <- "city"

results <- rbindlist(list(tmp1,tmp2), use.names= TRUE, fill = TRUE)

See the result

Jaap
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Moun
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1
df <- merge(DF1, DF2, by = c("date", "id"))
df$newcolumn <- ifelse(is.na(df$column.y), df$column.x, df$column.y, all.x = TRUE)

Replace column with your variable.

toni057
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