ggplot: Boxplot by several categorical variables

Question

I am trying to plot several boxplots in one chart using ggplot2. I have 1 continuous variable and several factors. I would like to have a single Y axis and each pair of boxplots to have their own x axis with their own factor levels. So far, I tried to use cowplot::plot_grid to join together charts that I made separately with an empty chart that I use for the Y axis. I tried to make the charts blend nicely by hiding margins and resizing the charts but I still cannot get reasonable results and this method involves too much manual tweaking. This is what I want to get and what I came up so far: charts

And this is my script:

library(ggplot2)
library(cowplot)
library(dplyr)

# make a dataset:
DF <- mtcars
DF$cyl <- as.factor(DF$cyl)
DF$vs <- as.factor(DF$vs)
DF$am <- as.factor(DF$am)
DF$gear <- as.factor(DF$gear)
DF$carb <- as.factor(DF$carb)
#str(DF)

# fisrt boxplot
p1 <- DF %>% ggplot() + theme_grey() + aes(x=cyl, y=mpg, fill=cyl) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  theme(legend.position = "none",
        axis.title.y = element_blank(),
        axis.text.y = element_blank(),
        axis.ticks.y = element_blank()) +
  theme(plot.margin = margin(t=0.1, r=0, b=0, l=0, unit="cm"))

# second boxplot
p2 <- DF %>% ggplot() + theme_grey() + aes(x=vs, y=mpg, fill=vs) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  theme(legend.position = "none",
        axis.title.y = element_blank(),
        axis.text.y = element_blank(),
        axis.ticks.y = element_blank()) +
  theme(plot.margin = margin(t=0.1, r=0, b=0, l=0, unit="cm"))

# empty boxplot used only for the y axis
y_axis <- DF %>% ggplot() + theme_grey() + aes(x=mpg, y=mpg) +
  geom_point() +
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(),
        axis.text.y = element_text(),
        axis.title.x = element_text(),
        axis.text.x = element_text()) +
  theme(plot.margin = margin(t=0.1, r=0, b=0, l=0, unit="cm"))+
  scale_x_continuous(limits = c(0, 0), breaks=c(0), labels = c(""), name="")

# join all charts toghether
p_all <- plot_grid(y_axis, p1, p2,
                   align="v", axis="l", 
                   nrow=1, rel_widths = c(0.2, 1, 1))

ggdraw(p_all)

Answer 1

This is how it looks like with several variables, some color and using tidyr. You can add the border between the plots with panel.border and should specify the number of rows to be 1 in the facet_wrap:

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)

# Only select variables meaningful as factor
DF <- select(mtcars, mpg, cyl, vs, am, gear, carb) 

DF %>% 
  gather(variable, value, -mpg) %>%
  ggplot(aes(factor(value), mpg, fill = factor(value))) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  facet_wrap(~variable, scales = "free_x", nrow = 1, strip.position = "bottom") +
  theme(panel.spacing = unit(0, "lines"),
        panel.border = element_rect(fill = NA),
        strip.background = element_blank(),
        axis.title.x = element_blank(),
        legend.position = "none",
        strip.placement = "outside")