geom_label_repel doesn't work with date column

[vhpietil]

Summary

If label column has date values, geom_label_repel doesn't work. geom_label does work with dates.

Minimal code example

Here is the minimum amount of code needed to demonstrate the issue:

library(tibble)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggrepel)
library(gridExtra)

# Create data sets with date or text label column

plotdata_w_date <- tibble(x = as.Date(c("2021-01-01", 
                                        "2021-01-02", 
                                        "2021-01-03")),
                          y = c(1, 
                                2, 
                                3),
                          label = as.Date(c(NA, 
                                            "2021-01-02", 
                                            NA)))

plotdata_w_date
#> # A tibble: 3 x 3
#>   x              y label     
#>   <date>     <dbl> <date>    
#> 1 2021-01-01     1 NA        
#> 2 2021-01-02     2 2021-01-02
#> 3 2021-01-03     3 NA

plotdata_w_text <- tibble(x = as.Date(c("2021-01-01", 
                                        "2021-01-02", 
                                        "2021-01-03")),
                          y = c(1, 
                                2, 
                                3),
                          label = as.character(as.Date(c(NA, 
                                                         "2021-01-02", 
                                                         NA))))

plotdata_w_text
#> # A tibble: 3 x 3
#>   x              y label     
#>   <date>     <dbl> <chr>     
#> 1 2021-01-01     1 <NA>      
#> 2 2021-01-02     2 2021-01-02
#> 3 2021-01-03     3 <NA>

# Plot both data with geom_label and geom_label_repel 

p1 <- ggplot(plotdata_w_date, aes(x = x, y = y, label = label)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_label() +
  ggtitle("geom_label() with date")

p2 <- ggplot(plotdata_w_date, aes(x = x, y = y, label = label)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_label_repel() +
  ggtitle("geom_label_repel() with date")

p3 <- ggplot(plotdata_w_text, aes(x = x, y = y, label = label)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_label() +
  ggtitle("geom_label() with text")

p4 <- ggplot(plotdata_w_text, aes(x = x, y = y, label = label)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_label_repel() +
  ggtitle("geom_label_repel() with text")

grid.arrange(p1, p2, p3, p4, ncol = 2, nrow = 2)
#> Warning: Removed 2 rows containing missing values (geom_label).
#> Warning: Removed 2 rows containing missing values (geom_label_repel).
#> Warning: Removed 2 rows containing missing values (geom_label).
#> Warning: Removed 2 rows containing missing values (geom_label_repel).

Here is an image of the output produced by the code:

Suggestions

It would be nice if geom_label_repel would work with date values like geom_label

Version information

Here is the output from sessionInfo() in my R session:

sessionInfo()
#> R version 4.0.3 (2020-10-10)
#> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
#> Running under: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
#> 
#> Matrix products: default
#> BLAS/LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libopenblasp-r0.3.8.so
#> 
#> locale:
#>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
#>  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
#>  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=C             
#>  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
#>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
#> [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       
#> 
#> attached base packages:
#> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices datasets  utils     methods   base     
#> 
#> other attached packages:
#> [1] gridExtra_2.3 ggrepel_0.9.1 ggplot2_3.3.3 tibble_3.1.0 
#> 
#> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
#>  [1] Rcpp_1.0.6        knitr_1.31        magrittr_2.0.1    munsell_0.5.0    
#>  [5] colorspace_2.0-0  R6_2.5.0          rlang_0.4.10      fansi_0.4.2      
#>  [9] stringr_1.4.0     styler_1.4.0      highr_0.8         tools_4.0.3      
#> [13] grid_4.0.3        gtable_0.3.0      xfun_0.22         utf8_1.2.1       
#> [17] withr_2.4.1       htmltools_0.5.1.1 ellipsis_0.3.1    yaml_2.2.1       
#> [21] digest_0.6.27     lifecycle_1.0.0   crayon_1.4.1      purrr_0.3.4      
#> [25] vctrs_0.3.6       fs_1.5.0          glue_1.4.2        evaluate_0.14    
#> [29] rmarkdown_2.7     reprex_1.0.0      stringi_1.5.3     compiler_4.0.3   
#> [33] pillar_1.5.1      scales_1.1.1      backports_1.2.1   renv_0.13.1      
#> [37] pkgconfig_2.0.3

[slowkow]

Thanks for opening the issue and sharing the code and figure.