Automatically scale x-axis by date range within a factor using xyplot()

Question

I've been trying to write out an R script that will plot the date-temp series for a set of locations that are identified by a Deployment_ID.

Ideally, each page of the output pdf would have the name of the Deployment_ID (check), a graph with proper axes (check) and correct scaling of the x-axis to best show the date-temp series for that specific Deployment_ID (not check).

At the moment, the script makes a pdf that shows each ID over the full range of the dates in the date column (i.e. 1988-2010), instead of just the relevant dates (i.e. just 2005), which squishes the scatterplot down into uselessness.

I'm pretty sure it's something to do with how you define xlim, but I can't figure out how to have R access the date min and the date max for each factor as it draws the plots.

Script I have so far:

#Get CSV to read data from, change the file path and name
data <- read.csv(file.path("C:\Users\Person\Desktop\", "SampleData.csv"))

#Make Date real date - must be in yyyy/mm/dd format from the csv to do so
data$Date <- as.Date(data$Date)

#Call lattice to library, note to install.packages(lattice) if you don't have it
library(lattice)

#Make the plots with lattice, this takes a while.
dataplot <- xyplot(data$Temp~data$Date|factor(data$Deployment_ID),
   data=data, 
   stack = TRUE, 
   auto.key = list(space = "right"), 
   layout = c(1,1),
   ylim = c(-10,40)
   )

#make the pdf
pdf("Dataplots_SampleData.pdf", onefile = TRUE)

#print to the pdf? Not really sure how this works. Takes a while.
print(dataplot)
dev.off()

Answer 1

Use the scales argument. give this a try

dataplot <- xyplot(data$Temp~data$Date|factor(data$Deployment_ID),
data=data, 
stack = TRUE, 
auto.key = list(space = "right"), 
layout = c(1,1),
scales= list( relation ="free")
  )