How to Filter by Date Using dplyr

You can use the following methods to filter a data frame by dates in R using the dplyr package:

Method 1: Filter Rows After Date

df %>% filter(date_column > '2022-01-01')

Method 2: Filter Rows Before Date

df %>% filter(date_column 2022-01-01') 

Method 3: Filter Rows Between Two Dates

df %>% filter(between(date_column, as.Date('2022-01-20'), as.Date('2022-02-20')))

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following data frame in R:

#create data frame
df frame(day=seq(as.Date('2022-01-01'), by = 'week', length.out=10),
                 sales=c(40, 35, 39, 44, 48, 51, 23, 29, 60, 65))

#view data frame
df

          day sales
1  2022-01-01    40
2  2022-01-08    35
3  2022-01-15    39
4  2022-01-22    44
5  2022-01-29    48
6  2022-02-05    51
7  2022-02-12    23
8  2022-02-19    29
9  2022-02-26    60
10 2022-03-05    65

Example 1: Filter Rows After Date

We can use the following code to filter for the rows in the data frame that have a date after 1/25/2022:

library(dplyr)

#filter for rows with date after 1/25/2022
df %>% filter(day > '2022-01-25')

         day sales
1 2022-01-29    48
2 2022-02-05    51
3 2022-02-12    23
4 2022-02-19    29
5 2022-02-26    60
6 2022-03-05    65

Each of the rows in the resulting data frame have a date after 1/25/2022.

Example 2: Filter Rows Before Date

We can use the following code to filter for the rows in the data frame that have a date before 1/25/2022:

library(dplyr)

#filter for rows with date before 1/25/2022
df %>% filter(day 2022-01-25')

         day sales
1 2022-01-01    40
2 2022-01-08    35
3 2022-01-15    39
4 2022-01-22    44

Each of the rows in the resulting data frame have a date before 1/25/2022.

Example 3: Filter Rows Between Two Dates

We can use the following code to filter for the rows in the data frame that have a date between 1/20/2022 and 2/20/2022:

library(dplyr)

#filter for rows with dates between 1/20/2022 and 2/20/2022
df %>% filter(between(date_column, as.Date('2022-01-20'), as.Date('2022-02-20'))) 

         day sales
1 2022-01-22    44
2 2022-01-29    48
3 2022-02-05    51
4 2022-02-12    23
5 2022-02-19    29

Each of the rows in the resulting data frame have a date between 1/20/2022 and 2/20/2022.

Note #1: If any of the methods above don’t work, then you may need to first convert the dates you’re working with to a recognizable date format using the as.Date() function.

Note #2: You can find the complete documentation for the filter function in dplyr here.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in dplyr:

How to Filter Rows that Contain a Certain String Using dplyr
How to Filter by Multiple Conditions Using dplyr
How to Use a “not in” Filter in dplyr