Question

Many R objects have S3 methods to plot associated with them. For instance, every R regression tutorial contains something like this:

dat <- data.frame(x=runif(10))
dat$y <- dat$x+runif(10)
my.lm <- lm( y~x, dat )
plot(my.lm)

Which displays regression diagnostics.

Similarly, I have an S3 object for a package which consists of a list which basically holds a few time series. I have a plot.myobject method for it which reaches into the list, yanks out the time series, and plots them on the same graph. I would like to rewrite this as a ggplot2 function so that it will be prettier and perhaps more extensible as well.

Because this package is intended to get people without much R experience up and running quickly, I’d like this to be a one-liner with one argument, as in plot(myobject), ggplot(myobject), or whatever the appropriate version might be. Then once they get hooked, they can learn more about ggplot2 and customize the graph to their heart’s content.

My initial temptation was to simply replace the internals of the plot.myobject method to use ggplot2. This, however, seems like it might lose me major style points.

Is this a bad idea, and if so why and what alternative should I use?

Answer 1

As per Hadley’s suggestion in comments, I have submitted a generic S3 autoplot() to the ggplot2 Github repository. So if it’s accepted and checks out, there should be an autoplot available for this use in the future.

Update

autoplot is now available in ggplot2.