Working with legends

Multiple legends per guide

For our final trick in this act, we reposition a legend with multiple guides. For this, use theme(legend.box.background) to put a background around the entire legend, not just the individual guides.

d2 <- d + aes(shape=cut) + 
  theme(legend.box.background = element_rect(fill='#fffafa'),
        legend.background = element_blank())
reposition_legend(d2, 'left')

## Warning: Using shapes for an ordinal variable is not advised
## Using shapes for an ordinal variable is not advised

Legend with multple guides on a tacky ‘snow’ background.

Legends are placed under axis lines

The guidebox uses a solid background (subject to the chosen theme), and prior to lemon version 0.3.1, the entire legend was placed as the top most element. In the examples above, this was not an issue. With axis lines drawn, this effectively overpainted some of the axis (same applies to the panel border).

The guidebox is therefore placed under the lowest axis line, if and only if z = Inf. To place as top most, specify a large z-index.

reposition_legend(d + theme_classic(), 'top left')

Legend is drawn under axis lines.

To adjust the guidebox so it does not overpaint the panel border, use arguments x and y,

reposition_legend(d + theme_bw(), 'top left', x=0.002, y=1-0.002)

Legend has to be nudged to not overpaint panel border.

… or use the argument offset:

reposition_legend(d + theme_bw(), 'top left', offset=0.002)

Legend has to be nudged to not overpaint panel border, this time by offset.

Warning regarding extracting legend

To our knowledge, there exists two methods for extracting the legend:

g1 <- function(a.gplot){
  if (!gtable::is.gtable(a.gplot))
    a.gplot <- ggplotGrob(a.gplot)
  leg <- which(sapply(a.gplot$grobs, function(x) x$name) == "guide-box")
  a.gplot$grobs[[leg]]
}
g2 <- function(a.gplot){
  if (!gtable::is.gtable(a.gplot))
    a.gplot <- ggplotGrob(a.gplot)
  gtable::gtable_filter(a.gplot, 'guide-box', fixed=TRUE)
}

There is very little difference between them, as the latter essentially does the same as the former. The latter however encapsulated the former in a gtable. This is even more evident with multiple guides:

(da <- ggplot(dsamp, aes(carat, price)) +
  geom_point(aes(colour = clarity, shape=cut)) +
   theme(legend.box = 'horizontal')
)

## Warning: Using shapes for an ordinal variable is not advised

Two guides in a single legend, in a grossly undersized figure.

print(g1(da))

## Warning: Using shapes for an ordinal variable is not advised

## TableGrob (5 x 7) "guide-box": 3 grobs
##                                     z     cells                  name
## 99_381f32e9ea4e3b1d599570c517bab0e6 1 (3-3,3-3)                guides
## 99_791b132dadc2d5f2af2d4bd5c998142b 2 (3-3,5-5)                guides
##                                     0 (2-4,2-6) legend.box.background
##                                               grob
## 99_381f32e9ea4e3b1d599570c517bab0e6 gtable[layout]
## 99_791b132dadc2d5f2af2d4bd5c998142b gtable[layout]
##                                     zeroGrob[NULL]

print(g2(da))

## Warning: Using shapes for an ordinal variable is not advised

## TableGrob (1 x 1) "layout": 1 grobs
##    z     cells      name              grob
## 1 14 (1-1,1-1) guide-box gtable[guide-box]

The function reposition_legend assumes the method given in g1, which is also given in g_legend.

Placing the legend in facets

The above demonstration finds the panel named panel. This is default. If using facetting, the panels are typically named panel-{column}-{row}. We use gtable_show_names to display the names of the facetted panels.

d2 <- d + facet_grid(.~cut, )
gtable_show_names(d2)

Facetted panels’ names.

So to place the legend in a specific panel, give its name:

reposition_legend(d2, 'top left', panel = 'panel-1-5')

Placing the legend in a facet panel.

Likewise for facet_wrap. Incidentally, empty panels are also named here:

reposition_legend(d + facet_wrap(~cut, ncol=3), 'top left', panel='panel-3-2')

Placing the legend in an empty panel when using facet_wrap.

Modifying the legend is done via usual routines of ggplot2:

d3 <- d + facet_wrap(~cut, ncol=3) + scale_color_discrete(guide=guide_legend(ncol=3))
reposition_legend(d3, 'center', panel='panel-3-2')

The looks of the legend is modified with usual ggplot2 options.

Also supports spanning multiple panels:

d4 <- d + facet_wrap(~cut, ncol=4) + scale_color_discrete(guide=guide_legend(nrow=2))
reposition_legend(d4, 'center', panel=c('panel-2-2','panel-4-2'))

Supplying reposition_legend with multple panel-names allows the legend to span them.

The panel names are not easy to figure, especially those from facet_wrap. We refer to gtable_show_names to get a look at where they are:

gtable_show_names(d4)

Use of gtable_show_names to reveal the panels’ names.

Complex layout with grid_arrange_shared_legend

Asked on: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46238676/common-legend-for-a-grid-plot

In this reproducible example grid plot, 3 plots have 3 fill colours, and z displays with the “col” blue, but in the fourth plot there is only 1 “col”, so z displays as red.

I want to show only one common legend (which I can do), but I want z to be blue in all four plots. Is there a simple way to do that?

Before:

library(ggplot2)
library(grid)
library(gridExtra)

d0 <- read.csv(text="x, y, col\na,2,x\nb,2,y\nc,1,z")
d1 <- read.csv(text="x, y, col\na,2,x\nb,2,y\nc,1,z")
d2 <- read.csv(text="x, y, col\na,2,x\nb,2,y\nc,1,z")
d3 <- read.csv(text="x, y, col\na,2,z\nb,2,z\nc,1,z")
p0 <- ggplot(d0) + geom_col(mapping = aes(x, y, fill = col))
p1 <- ggplot(d1) + geom_col(mapping = aes(x, y, fill = col))
p2 <- ggplot(d2) + geom_col(mapping = aes(x, y, fill = col))
p3 <- ggplot(d3) + geom_col(mapping = aes(x, y, fill = col))
grid.arrange(p0, arrangeGrob(p1,p2,p3, ncol=3), ncol=1)

nt <- theme(legend.position='hidden')
grid_arrange_shared_legend(p0, arrangeGrob(p1+nt,p2+nt,p3+nt, ncol=3), ncol=1, nrow=2)