plotly.R

An R package for creating interactive web graphics via the open sourceJavaScript graphing libraryplotly.js.

Installation

Install from CRAN:

install.packages("plotly")

Or install the latest development version (on GitHub) via {remotes}:

remotes::install_github("plotly/plotly")

Getting started

Web-based ggplot2 graphics

If you use ggplot2, ggplotly()converts your static plots to an interactive web-based version!

library(plotly)
g <- ggplot(faithful, aes(x = eruptions, y = waiting)) +
  stat_density_2d(aes(fill = ..level..), geom = "polygon") + 
  xlim(1, 6) + ylim(40, 100)
ggplotly(g)

By default, ggplotly() tries to replicate the static ggplot2 versionexactly (before any interaction occurs), but sometimes you need greatercontrol over the interactive behavior. The ggplotly() function itselfhas some convenient “high-level” arguments, such as dynamicTicks,which tells plotly.js to dynamically recompute axes, when appropriate.The style() function also comes in handy for modifying theunderlying traceattributes (e.g. hoveron) used to generate the plot:

gg <- ggplotly(g, dynamicTicks = "y")
style(gg, hoveron = "points", hoverinfo = "x+y+text", hoverlabel = list(bgcolor = "white"))

Moreover, since ggplotly() returns a plotly object, you can applyessentially any function from the R package on that object. Some usefulones include layout() (for customizing thelayout),add_traces() (and its higher-level add_*() siblings, for exampleadd_polygons(), for adding newtraces/data),subplot() (for combining multiple plotlyobjects),and plotly_json() (for inspecting the underlying JSON sent toplotly.js).

The ggplotly() function will also respect some “unofficial”ggplot2 aesthetics, namely text (for customizing thetooltip),frame (for creatinganimations),and ids (for ensuring sensible smooth transitions).

Using plotly without ggplot2

The plot_ly() function provides a more direct interface to plotly.jsso you can leverage more specialized chart types (e.g., parallelcoordinates ormaps) or even some visualization that theggplot2 API won’t ever support (e.g., surface,mesh,trisurf, etc).

plot_ly(z = ~volcano, type = "surface")

Learn more

To learn more about special features that the plotly R package provides (e.g., client-side linking, shiny integration, editing and generating static images, custom events in JavaScript, and more), see https://plotly-r.com. You may already be familiar with existing plotly documentation (e.g., https://plotly.com/r/), which is essentially a language-agnostic how-to guide for learning plotly.js, whereas https://plotly-r.com is meant to be more wholistic tutorial written by and for the R user. The package itself ships with a number of demos (list them by running demo(package = "plotly")) and shiny/rmarkdown examples (list them by running plotly_example("shiny") or plotly_example("rmd")). Carson also keeps numerous slide decks with useful examples and concepts.

Contributing

Please read through our contributingguidelines.Included are directions for opening issues, asking questions,contributing changes to plotly, and our code ofconduct.