Place a legend for each facet_wrap grid in ggplot2

Question

I have this data frame:

        Date Server FileSystem PercentUsed
1  12/1/2011      A          /          60
2   1/2/2012      A       /var          50
3            


        

Answer 1

I liked @joran's answer and provide a couple of options based off of their code as a starting point. Both options address the issue of mis-aligned facets.

Legends outside facets

If you choose a monospaced font for your legend items, you can use str_pad to add padding on the right-hand side of all legend entries, forcing the length of each to be consistent.

If you're willing to use a monospaced font, this is a quick fix.

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(gridExtra)
library(stringr)

l <- max(nchar(as.character(x$FileSystem)))
mylevels <- as.character(levels(x$FileSystem))
mylevels <- str_pad(mylevels, width = l, side = "right", pad = " ")
x <- mutate(x, FileSystem = factor(str_pad(FileSystem, width = l, side = "right", pad = " "),
            levels = mylevels))
windowsFonts("Lucida Sans Typewriter" = windowsFont("Lucida Sans Typewriter"))
xs <- split(x,f = x$Server)
p1 <- ggplot(xs$A,aes(x = Date,y = PercentUsed,group = 1,colour = FileSystem)) + 
  geom_jitter(size=0.5) + 
  geom_smooth(method="loess", se=T) + 
  facet_wrap(~Server, ncol=1) +
  theme(legend.text = element_text(family = "Lucida Sans Typewriter"))

p2 <- p1 %+% xs$B
p3 <- p1 %+% xs$C

grid.arrange(p1,p2,p3)

Legends inside facets

If you don't mind legends inside each facet, you can add extra space to each facet with the "expand" argument inside scale call:

library(lubridate)
x <- mutate(x, Date = as.Date(as.character(Date), format = "%m/%d/%Y"))
xs <- split(x,f = x$Server)
p1 <- ggplot(xs$A,aes(x = Date,y = PercentUsed,group = 1,colour = FileSystem)) + 
  geom_jitter(size=0.5) + 
  scale_x_date(expand = expansion(add = c(5, 20)),
               date_labels = "%d-%m-%Y") +
  geom_smooth(method="loess", se=T) + 
  facet_wrap(~Server, ncol=1) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(legend.position = c(0.9, 0.5))

p2 <- p1 %+% xs$B
p3 <- p1 %+% xs$C

grid.arrange(p1,p2,p3)