left_join fails on a sf object in quarto *only* when read from rds

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1

I'm running into a weird issue with sf objects that causes rendering to fail only if I read in the object from an rds file.

In my quarto doc rendering to html, the following code renders fine:

library(tidyverse)

# import map data
us_geo <-
  tigris::states(class = "sf", cb = TRUE) %>%
  tigris::shift_geometry() %>%
  filter(GEOID < 60)

# data that I want to plot
state_data <- read_csv("state_data.csv")

# join to be able to plot the map with state data
map_data <-
  us_geo %>%
  left_join(state_data, by = c("NAME" = "state")) # tigris uses NAME for state name

# plot
map_data %>%
  ...

Importing data from tigris is a little slow. Since I'm rendering a bunch of documents, I thought I'd save time by reading us_geo from an rds file instead, i.e., in a static file:

library(tidyverse)

# save map data to an rds file
tigris::states(class = "sf", cb = TRUE) %>%
  tigris::shift_geometry() %>%
  filter(GEOID < 60) %>%
  write_rds("us_geo.rds")

This works fine when I run interactively a-la running code chunks, but fails to join when I try to render the document with the warning below!

library(tidyverse)

# import map data
us_geo <- read_rds("us_geo.rds")

# data that I want to plot
state_data <- read_csv("state_data.csv")

# join to be able to plot the map with state data
map_data <-
  us_geo %>%
  left_join(state_data, by = c("NAME" = "state"))

# plot
map_data %>%
  ...

Error in `as_tibble()`:
! All columns in a tibble must be vectors.
✖ Column `geometry` is a `sfc_MULTIPOLYGON/sfc` object.
Backtrace:
 5. dplyr:::left_join.data.frame(., state_data, by = c(NAME = "state"))
 6. dplyr:::join_mutate(...)
 8. tibble:::as_tibble.data.frame(x, .name_repair = "minimal")

Again, this works just fine when I run the chunk interactively --- does anyone have an idea about what might be going on? (also, if there's a better way to generate a reprex for quarto docs, I'm all ears)

2

Do you have {sf} loaded? It kind of looks as if your R session did not know how to interpret the geometry column.

It is possible tigris loads sf in the background, but the call does not happen when loading the rds.

3

that did the trick --- you're a wizard, thank you!

4

I wish I was... :slight_smile: But I'm glad I could be of service!