position_dodge() doesn't seem to work whex x-axis is a date

[clayford]

I think I found a problem with position_dodge() when the x-axis is a date.

When creating a bar plot with dodged groups and a date on the x-axis, I am unable to place counts above the bars like the example provided in the geom_text() documentation.

Here is the code to reproduce the bug:

df <- data.frame(
  date <- as.Date(c("2025-01-01", "2025-01-01",
                    "2025-02-01", "2025-02-01")),
  y = c(1, 3, 2, 1),
  grp = c("a", "b", "a", "b")
)

ggplot(data = df, aes(date, y, group = grp)) +
  geom_col(aes(fill = grp), position = "dodge") +
  geom_text(aes(label = y), position = position_dodge(0.9))

I am using ggplot2 version 4.0.2.

[joranE]

I think you simply have to adjust the dodging width to match the scale of units on the x axis?

ggplot(data = df, aes(date, y, group = grp)) +
  geom_col(aes(fill = grp), position = "dodge") +
  geom_text(aes(label = y),position = position_dodge(27.5))

It takes some experimenting to find a suitable value.

[clayford]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the quick reply!