Draw horizontal lines between dates in ggplot2 in r

Question

Consider example dataframe as:

df <- data.frame(Names = c("A", "A", "B", "B", "C", "C"), 
                 Start = structure(c(18659, NA, 19024, NA, 19297, NA), class = "Date"),
                 End = structure(c(NA, 21062, NA, 20970, NA, 22552), class = "Date"),
                 Dates = structure(c(18659, 21062, 19024, 20970, 19297, 22552), class = "Date"))

I want to create a timeline plot with the Names on y-axis and Dates on x-axis. then I want to draw horizontal lines between the Start and End points:

ggplot(df, aes(x = Dates, y = Names)) + geom_point(size = 1) + 
  theme_classic() + guides(color = FALSE) + labs(title = "title") +
  theme(axis.line.y = element_blank(), axis.ticks = element_blank(),
        axis.title = element_blank(), axis.text.y = element_text(size = 12, color = "black"),
        plot.title = element_text(size = 20, hjust = 0.5, face = "bold",
          margin = margin(c(0.3,0,0.5,0), unit = "in")), 
        axis.text.x = element_text(size = 12, color = "black",
           margin = margin(c(0.27,0,0,0), unit = "in")),
        axis.line.x = element_line(size = 0.9, color = "navy")) +
  scale_x_date(date_break = "5 months", date_labels = "%b") +
  geom_segment(aes(x = Start, xend = End,
                   y = Names, yend = Names), size = 0.6, color = "navy")

But I cannot get the horizontal segment lines to show on the plot:

Desired output is:

Answer 1

You're looking for geom_linerange. Also, your dataframe is not ideally constructed, you should fill NAs.

df <- data.frame(Names = c("A", "A", "B", "B", "C", "C"), 
           Start = structure(c(18659, NA, 19024, NA, 19297, NA), class = "Date"),
           End = structure(c(NA, 21062, NA, 20970, NA, 22552), class = "Date"),
           Dates = structure(c(18659, 21062, 19024, 20970, 19297, 22552), class = "Date")) %>% 
  fill(Start) %>% 
  fill(End, .direction = "up")


ggplot(df, aes(x = Dates, y = Names)) + geom_point(size = 1) + 
  geom_linerange(aes(xmin = Start, xmax = End)) +
  scale_x_date(date_break = "5 months", date_labels = "%b")