How can I suppress the vertical gridlines in a ggplot2 plot while retaining the x-axis labels?

This is a follow-on from this question, in which I was trying to suppress the vertical gridlines.

The solution, as provided by learnr, was to add scale_x_continuous(breaks = NA), but this had the side effect of also suppressing the x-axis labels, as well. I am totally happy to write 开发者_高级运维the labels back in by hand, but it's not clear to me how to figure out where the labels should go.

The other option is to suppress all gridlines (using opts( panel.grid.major = theme_blank()) or some such) and then drawing back in just the major horizontal gridlines. Again, the problem here is how to figure out what the breaks are in the plot to supply to geom_hline().

So, essentially, my options are:

1. Suppress vertical gridlines and x-axis labels (using scale_x_continuous(breaks = NA) ) and add the x-axis labels back in.
2. Suppress all gridlines (using opts( panel.grid.major = theme_blank()) ) and add the major horizontal gridlines back in using geom_hline().

Here are the two options:

library(ggplot2)

data <- data.frame(x = 1:10, y = c(3,5,2,5,6,2,7,6,5,4))

# suppressing vertical gridlines and x-axis labels
# need to re-draw x-axis labels
ggplot(data, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_bar(stat = 'identity') +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = NA) +
  opts(
    panel.grid.major = theme_line(size = 0.5, colour = '#1391FF'),
    panel.grid.minor = theme_blank(),
    panel.background = theme_blank(),
    axis.ticks = theme_blank()
  )

# suppressing all gridlines
# need to re-draw horizontal gridlines, probably with geom_hbar() 
ggplot(data, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_bar(stat = 'identity') +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = NA) +
  opts(
    panel.grid.major = theme_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor = theme_blank(),
    panel.background = theme_blank(),
    axis.ticks = theme_blank()
  )

As code in comments does not display nicely, so I am posting this as an answer. You could do something like this and add labels manually with geom_text():

ggplot(data, aes(x, y)) +
        geom_bar(stat = 'identity') +
        scale_x_continuous(breaks = NA) +
        opts(
                panel.grid.major = theme_line(size = 0.5, colour = '#1391FF'),
                panel.grid.minor = theme_blank(),
                panel.background = theme_blank(),
                axis.ticks = theme_blank()
        )+
        geom_text(aes(label = x, y = -.3))

The answers above will not work in ggplot2 version 0.9.2.1 and above. Fortunately, there is now an easier way to do this, as described in response to a different question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8992102/800044.

You can do this editing the grob directly, try:

grid.remove(gPath("panel.grid.minor.x.polyline"),grep=T)
grid.remove(gPath("panel.grid.major.x.polyline"),grep=T) 

It will strip off your vertical lines. I'm just having problems to use it inside a function, because I guess that it only works when the ggplot is printed.

But, if that's not your case and you'll just need the graphic, than it will work.

Well I found this solution while googling for this problem. I have not tried it, yet.

http://wiki.stdout.org/rcookbook/Graphs/Axes%20(ggplot2)/

You have to scroll down a bit.

Best,

Felix

For people looking this up in 2020, I have found a solution in the form of the removeGrid function from the ggExtra library here rdrr.io > removeGrid

I have tested it to be working with ggplot2 version 3.3.0 and ggExtra version 0.9, giving me axis ticks without the gridlines.