Assigning the result of corrplot to a variable - correlation

Question

I am using the function corrplot from corrplot package to generate a plot of a correlation matrix created with cor.test (psych package).
When I try to save the result into a variable, the variable is NULL.
Anyone could advice, please?
library(corrplot)
library(psych)
library(ggpubr)
data(iris)
res_pearson.c_setosa<-iris%>%
filter(Species=="setosa")%>%
select(Sepal.Length:Petal.Width)%>%
corr.test(., y = NULL, use = "complete",method="pearson",adjust="bonferroni", alpha=.05,ci=TRUE,minlength=5)
corr.a<-corrplot(res_pearson.c_setosa$r[,1:3],
type="lower",
order="original",
p.mat = res_pearson.c_setosa$p[,1:3],
sig.level = 0.05,
insig = "blank",
col=col4(10),
tl.pos = "ld",
tl.cex = .8,
tl.srt=45,
tl.col = "black",
cl.cex = .8)+
my.theme #this is a theme() piece, but if I take this away, the result is a list rather than a plot

Answer 1

You can create your own function where you put recordPlot at the end to save the plot. After that you can save the output of the function in a variable. Here is a reproducible example:
library(corrplot)
library(psych)
library(ggpubr)
library(dplyr)
data(iris)
res_pearson.c_setosa<-iris%>%
filter(Species=="setosa")%>%
select(Sepal.Length:Petal.Width)%>%
corr.test(., y = NULL, use = "complete",method="pearson",adjust="bonferroni", alpha=.05,ci=TRUE,minlength=5)
your_function <- function(ff){
corr.a<-corrplot(ff$r[,1:3],
type="lower",
order="original",
p.mat = ff$p[,1:3],
sig.level = 0.05,
insig = "blank",
#col=col4(10),
tl.pos = "ld",
tl.cex = .8,
tl.srt=45,
tl.col = "black",
cl.cex = .8)
#my.theme #this is a theme() piece, but if I take this away, the result is a list rather than a plot
recordPlot() # save the latest plot
}
your_function(res_pearson.c_setosa)
p <- your_function(res_pearson.c_setosa)
p
Created on 2022-07-13 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)
As you can see, the variable p outputs the plot.