How to have R formattable rendered to pdf output and how to have percents in the table

Question

I´m starting using R formattablepackage and still facing some problems to have chunks with formattable() outputting pdf document properly.

First problem: how to have numbers in percent format after applying any of the color_* functions available for numeric class only?

See the table below from the code presented executed/ran in Renviroment.

a<-formattable(x=a,list(A=color_bar("orange", 0.2),B=color_bar("orange", 0.2),C=color_bar("orange", 0.2),D=color_bar("orange", 0.2),E=color_bar("orange", 0.2)))

Assume a as a csvfile I had input by read.csv().

I want to have the "%" pasted together the numbers and, at same time, the orange bars from formattable, but if I convert the numeric to percent either by percent() from scale or by paste(a,"%",sep="") formattable will not work acussing numeric is required.

Second problem: When rendering to pdf, such table from the chunk presented is not being properly created. I tried to use direct output from formattable(a,list...), by print(a)and by print(xtable(a)) but did not work in any way. Any hint?

Answer 1

Solution to the first part of your question:

df <- data.frame(
  id = 1:10,
  A = sample(20:80, 10),
  B = sample(1:1000, 10),
  C = sample(1:10, 10),
  D = percent(runif(10, 0, 1), format = "d"), 
  E = percent(runif(10, 0, 1), format = "d"), 
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

formattable(df, list(
  A = color_tile("black", 0.2),
  B = color_tile("pink", 0.2),
  C = color_tile("orange", "gray"),
  D = color_tile("blue", 0.2),
  E = color_tile("green", 0.2)))

See documentation for further information: https://github.com/renkun-ken/formattable

Regarding pdf rendering - you can always make your table a 'htmlwidget' and then make pdf printscreen of it. In R you may try this function (source):

#' Export a Formattable as PNG, PDF, or JPEG
#'
#' @param f A formattable.
#' @param file Export path with extension .png, .pdf, or .jpeg.
#' @param width Width specification of the html widget being exported.
#' @param height Height specification of the html widget being exported.
#' @param background Background color specification.
#' @param delay Time to wait before taking webshot, in seconds.
#'
#' @importFrom formattable as.htmlwidget
#' @importFrom htmltools html_print
#' @importFrom webshot webshot
#'
#' @export
export_formattable <- function(f, file, width = "100%", height = NULL, 
                               background = "white", delay = 0.2)
{
  w <- as.htmlwidget(f, width = width, height = height)
  path <- html_print(w, background = background, viewer = NULL)
  url <- paste0("file:///", gsub("\\\\", "/", normalizePath(path)))
  webshot(url,
          file = file,
          selector = ".formattable_widget",
          delay = delay)
}