For example, I have a tidy data frame like this:
df <- tibble(id=1:2,
ctn=list(list(a="x",b=1),
list(a="y",b=2)))
# A tibble: 2 x 2
id ctn
<int> <list>
1 1 <list [2]>
2 2 <list [2]>
How could I unnest ctn column to the right so that the data frame will be like this:
# A tibble: 2 x 3
id a b
<int> <chr> <dbl>
1 1 x 1
2 2 y 2
In a tidy way we can now (dplyr 1.0.2 and above) do this using rowwise():
df %>% rowwise() %>% mutate(as_tibble(ctn))
# A tibble: 2 x 4
# Rowwise:
id ctn a b
<int> <list> <chr> <dbl>
1 1 <named list [2]> x 1
2 2 <named list [2]> y 2
And sticking to purrr we can also:
df %>% mutate(map_dfr(ctn, as_tibble))
# A tibble: 2 x 4
id ctn a b
<int> <list> <chr> <dbl>
1 1 <named list [2]> x 1
2 2 <named list [2]> y 2