User defined bins for time to change token aesthetics

It is possible to change the aesthetics of tokens based on the timestamp of the animation

For example, the number of days a ‘patient’ has been in the system

# Libraries ---------------------------------------------------------------
library(dplyr)            ##pipes
library(tidyr)            ##tidy data, partcularly the crossing() function
library(lubridate)        ##date time manipulation
library(bupaR)            ##buisness process analytics
library(processanimateR)  ##animates process

# Create performance time flags ------------------------------------------------
my_flags <- data.frame(value = c(0,2,4,8,16)) %>% 
            mutate(day = days(value)) #convert numeric value into days

This will change the colour of the token at 0, 2, 4, 8, and 16 days.

The crossing() function joins the cases of ‘patients’ to ‘my_flags’ and creates all possible combinations.

# Create timestamps of flags ----------------------------------------------

my_timeflags <- patients %>% 
                cases %>%
                crossing(my_flags) %>% ##similar to a SQL outer join
                mutate(time = start_timestamp + day) %>% 
                filter(time <= complete_timestamp) %>% 
                select("case" = patient,time,value) ##must be case, time, value

The data for the token_scale() function must have the column headings ‘case, time, value’.

Without the domain = my_flags$value argument the flags follow alphabetic order (e.g. 0, 16, 2, 4, 8) rather than the numeric order we wants. See d3-legend for further information.

# Animate process ---------------------------------------------------------

patients %>%
  animate_process(mode ="absolute",
                  jitter=10,
                  legend = "color", 
                  mapping = token_aes(
                    color = token_scale(my_timeflags
                                        , scale = "ordinal"
                                        , domain = my_flags$value
                                        , range = rev(RColorBrewer::brewer.pal(5,"Spectral"))
                    )))

The colors can be modified through the range argument. In this case the scale is reversed with rev() to go from blue to red. See RColorBrewer::brewer.pal.info for all options:

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Dominic Rowney for this nice example of advanced processanimateR usage. The original example code can be found here.

Dominic Rowney

2022-07-20