Sometimes I create reports or analyses that I would like to run on a monthly base. It saves some time if I can simply let the report run, without you having to edit any variables. Lubridate has two really cool functions to get the first day or the last day of a particular month.
These functions are floor_date() and ceiling_date(). When you give them a date, you can have these functions return the lowest or highest possible, month, week or day.
floor_date(ymd('2019-05-12'), 'month') # returns '2019-05-01'To get the first day and the last day of the month that has passed, we can do the following. We subtract 1 month from the current date and use the functions I described earlier.
start_date <- floor_date(Sys.Date() %m-% months(1), 'month')
end_date <- ceiling_date(Sys.Date() %m-% months(1), 'month')Now you can use start_date and end_date wherever you want.
Great success!