How to Convert a List to a Data Frame in R

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There are many cases in which you might want to convert a list to a data frame in R. This tutorial explains three different ways to do so.

Method 1: Base R

The following code snippet shows how to convert a list to a data frame using only base R:

#create list
my_list #convert list to data frame
data.frame(t(sapply(my_list,c)))

  X1 X2 X3 X4 X5
1  a  b  c  d  e
2  f  g  h  i  j

In this example, sapply converts the list to a matrix, then data.frame converts the matrix to a data frame. The end result is a data frame of two rows and five columns.

Method 2: Data Table

The following code snippet shows how to convert a list of two nested lists into a data frame with two rows and three columns using the rbindlist function from the data.table library:

#load data.table library
library(data.table)

#create list
my_list #convert list to data frame
rbindlist(my_list)

   var1 var2 var3
1:    1    2    3
2:    4    5    6

This results in a data table with two rows and three columns. If you’d like to convert this data table to a data frame, you can simply use as.data.frame(DT).

This method converts a list to a data frame faster than the previous method if you’re working with a very large dataset.

Method 3: Dplyr

The following code snippet shows how to convert a list of two nested lists into a data frame with two rows and three columns using the bind_rows function from the dplyr library:

#load library
library(dplyr)

#create list
my_list #convert list to data frame
bind_rows(my_list)

# A tibble: 2 x 3
   var1  var2  var3
    
1     1     2     3
2     4     5     6

This results in a data frame with two rows and three columns.

This method also tends to work faster than base R when you’re working with large datasets.