Plotting the world map in R

Question

I am trying to visualize some data from countries in a world map using R and ggplot2. I am using the following code(sample):

WorldData <- map_data('world')
df <-data.frame(region=c('Hungary','Lithuania','Argentina'),value=c(4,10,11))
Total <- merge(WorldData,df,by='region')

and for plotting using ggplot:

p <- ggplot()
p <- p + geom_polygon(data=Total, aes(x=long, y=lat, group = group,fill=Total$value),colour="white") + 
         scale_fill_continuous(low = "thistle2", high = "darkred", guide="colorbar")
P1 <- p + theme_bw()  + labs(fill = "legend" ,title = "Title", x="", y="")
P1 + scale_y_continuous(breaks=c()) + scale_x_continuous(breaks=c()) + theme(panel.border =  element_blank())

The output is this:

I believe that the problem is in the merge because when I change the data option in geom_polygon to WorldData and the fill option to 1 I have the following result:

Is this happening because I do not have data from all the countries in df? How can I overtake that?

edit: What I would like is to plot the whole map. (I was not clear in my description)

Answer 1

You can also work in "layers" as other GIS environments let you (which will also let you not merge the data). This can be achieved in many ways, but I like to use geom_map:

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)

WorldData <- map_data('world') %>% filter(region != "Antarctica") %>% fortify

df <- data.frame(region=c('Hungary','Lithuania','Argentina'), 
                 value=c(4,10,11), 
                 stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

p <- ggplot() +
    geom_map(data = WorldData, map = WorldData,
                  aes(x = long, y = lat, group = group, map_id=region),
                  fill = "white", colour = "#7f7f7f", size=0.5) + 
    geom_map(data = df, map=WorldData,
                  aes(fill=value, map_id=region),
                  colour="#7f7f7f", size=0.5) +
    coord_map("rectangular", lat0=0, xlim=c(-180,180), ylim=c(-60, 90)) +
    scale_fill_continuous(low="thistle2", high="darkred", guide="colorbar") +
    scale_y_continuous(breaks=c()) +
    scale_x_continuous(breaks=c()) +
    labs(fill="legend", title="Title", x="", y="") +
    theme_bw()
p 

That also has a projection (via coord_map) so you'll get consistent output and gets rid of Antarctica.