How to convert a list to a dataframe

In this tutorial, we will learn 3 different ways to convert a list object into a dataframe in R. First we will show how to use the base R function as.data.frame() to convert a list to a dataframe. Then we will show examples using map_df() function in purrr package in tidyverse and bind_rows() function in dplyr.

library(tidyverse)

First, let us create a small list object using list() function.

mylist   
1 a         3 F    
2 b         4 G    
3 c         5 H    
4 d         6 I    
5 e         7 J

Convert a list to a dataframe with bind_rows

Here is example of using dplyr’s bind_rows() function to convert a list to a dataframe.

bind_rows(mylist)

# A tibble: 5 × 3
  x         y z    
    
1 a         3 F    
2 b         4 G    
3 c         5 H    
4 d         6 I    
5 e         7 J