r - Insert missing time rows into a dataframe

Question

Let's say I have a dataframe:

df <- data.frame(group = c('A','A','A','B','B','B'), 
                 time = c(1,2,4,1,2,3),
                 data = c(5,6,7,8,9,10))

What I want to do is insert data into the data frame where it was missing in the sequence. So in the above example, I'm missing data for time = 3 for group A, and time = 4 for Group B. I would essentially want to put 0's in the place of the data column.

How would I go about adding these additional rows?

The goal would be:

df <- data.frame(group = c('A','A','A','A','B','B','B','B'), 
                 time = c(1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4),
                 data = c(5,6,0,7,8,9,10,0))

My real data is a couple thousand data points, so manually doing so isn't possible.

Answer 1

You can try merge/expand.grid

 res <- merge(
          expand.grid(group=unique(df$group), time=unique(df$time)),
                                     df, all=TRUE)
 res$data[is.na(res$data)] <- 0
 res
 #  group time data
 #1     A    1    5
 #2     A    2    6
 #3     A    3    0
 #4     A    4    7
 #5     B    1    8
 #6     B    2    9
 #7     B    3   10
 #8     B    4    0

Or using data.table

 library(data.table)
 setkey(setDT(df), group, time)[CJ(group=unique(group), time=unique(time))
                     ][is.na(data), data:=0L]
 #    group time data
 #1:     A    1    5
 #2:     A    2    6
 #3:     A    3    0
 #4:     A    4    7
 #5:     B    1    8
 #6:     B    2    9
 #7:     B    3   10
 #8:     B    4    0

Update

As @thelatemail mentioned in the comments, the above method would fail if a particular 'time' value is not present in all the groups. May be this would be more general.

 res <- merge(
          expand.grid(group=unique(df$group), 
                      time=min(df$time):max(df$time)),
                                     df, all=TRUE)
 res$data[is.na(res$data)] <- 0

and similarly replace time=unique(time) with time= min(time):max(time) in the data.table solution.