The easiest way to convert a data frame to a time series object in R is to use the read.zoo() function from the zoo package:
tseries zoo(df)
The following example shows how to use this function in practice.
Example: Convert Data Frame to Time Series in R
Suppose we have the following data frame in R:
#create data frame df frame(date = as.Date('2022-01-01') + 0:9, sales = runif(10, 10, 500) + seq(50, 59)^2) #view data frame df date sales 1 2022-01-01 2797.159 2 2022-01-02 2782.148 3 2022-01-03 2801.773 4 2022-01-04 3257.546 5 2022-01-05 3415.920 6 2022-01-06 3267.564 7 2022-01-07 3577.496 8 2022-01-08 3627.193 9 2022-01-09 3509.547 10 2022-01-10 3670.815
We can use the class() function to confirm that df is currently a data frame:
#display class of df
class(df)
[1] "data.frame"
To convert the data frame to a time series object, we can use the read.zoo() function from the zoo package:
library(zoo) #convert data frame to time series tseries zoo(df) #view time series tseries 2022-01-01 2022-01-02 2022-01-03 2022-01-04 2022-01-05 2022-01-06 2022-01-07 2797.159 2782.148 2801.773 3257.546 3415.920 3267.564 3577.496 2022-01-08 2022-01-09 2022-01-10 3627.193 3509.547 3670.815
And we can use the class() function to confirm that tseries has a “zoo” time series class.
#display class of tseries
class(tseries)
[1] "zoo"
We can use also use the as.ts() function to convert the “zoo” time series object to a “ts” time series object:
#convert to ts object tseries_ts ts(tseries) #view time series object tseries_ts Time Series: Start = 18993 End = 19002 Frequency = 1 [1] 2797.159 2782.148 2801.773 3257.546 3415.920 3267.564 3577.496 3627.193 [9] 3509.547 3670.815 #view class class(tseries_ts) [1] "ts"
Depending on your end goal, it might make more sense to convert the data frame to a “zoo” time series object or a “ts” time series object.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R:
How to Plot a Time Series in R
How to Convert a String to Datetime in R
How to Use difftime in R to Calculate Time Differences