Join tables by date range

date, join, merge, r, range

Solution

I know the following looks horrible in base, but here's what I came up with. It's better to use the 'sqldf' package (see below).

library(data.table)
data1 <- data.table(date = c('2010-01-21', '2010-01-25', '2010-02-02', '2010-02-09'),
                    name = c('id1','id2','id3','id4'))


data2 <- data.table(beginning=c('2010-01-15', '2010-01-23', '2010-01-30', '2010-02-05'), 
                    ending = c('2010-01-22','2010-01-29','2010-02-04','2010-02-13'),
                    class = c(1,2,3,4))

result <- cbind(data1,"beginning"=sapply(1:nrow(data2),function(x) data2$beginning[data2$beginning[x]<data1$date & data2$ending[x]>data1$date]),
            "ending"=sapply(1:nrow(data2),function(x) data2$ending[data2$beginning[x]<data1$date & data2$ending[x]>data1$date]),
            "class"=sapply(1:nrow(data2),function(x) data2$class[data2$beginning[x]<data1$date & data2$ending[x]>data1$date]))

Using the package sqldf:

library(sqldf)
result = sqldf("select * from data1
                left join data2
                on data1.date between data2.beginning and data2.ending")

Using data.table this is simply

data1[data2, on = .(date >= beginning, date <= ending)]

Problem

I am looking for simple method to join two tables by date range. 1 table contains exact date, another table contains two variables identifying beginning and ending of the time period. I need to join tables if date in first table is withing range from second table. ``` data1 <- data.table(date = c('2010-01-21', '2010-01-25', '2010-02-02', '2010-02-09'), name = c('id1','id2','id3','id4')) data2 <- data.table(beginning=c('2010-01-15', '2010-01-23', '2010-01-30', '2010-02-05'), ending = c('2010-01-22','2010-01-29','2010-02-04','2010-02-13'), class = c(1,2,3,4)) result <- data.table(date = c('2010-01-21', '2010-01-25', '2010-02-02', '2010-02-09'), beginning=c('2010-01-15', '2010-01-23', '2010-01-30', '2010-02-05'), ending = c('2010-01-22','2010-01-29','2010-02-04','2010-02-13'), name = c('id1','id2','id3','id4'), class = c(1,2,3,4)) ``` Any help please? I found few difficult examples but they don't even work on my data because of formats. I need something like: ``` select * from data1 left join select * from data2 where data2.beginning <= data1.date <= data2.ending ``` Thanks

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