How to join multiple data frames using dplyr?

Question

I want to left_join multiple data frames:

dfs <- list(
  df1 = data.frame(a = 1:3, b = c("a", "b", "c")),
  df2 = data.frame(c = 4:6, b = c("a", "c", "d")),
  df3 = data.frame(d = 7:9, b = c("b", "c", "e"))
)
Reduce(left_join, dfs)
#   a b  c  d
# 1 1 a  4 NA
# 2 2 b NA  7
# 3 3 c  5  8

This works because they all have the same b column, but Reduce doesn't let me specify additional arguments that I can pass to left_join. Is there a work around for something like this?

dfs <- list(
  df1 = data.frame(a = 1:3, b = c("a", "b", "c")),
  df2 = data.frame(c = 4:6, d = c("a", "c", "d")),
  df3 = data.frame(d = 7:9, b = c("b", "c", "e"))
)

Update

This kind of works: Reduce(function(...) left_join(..., by = c("b" = "d")), dfs) but when by is more than one element it gives this error: Error: cannot join on columns 'b' x 'd': index out of bounds

Answer 1

Would this work for you?

jnd.tbl <- df1 %>%
    left_join(df2, by='b') %>%
    left_join(df3, by='d')