Interactive area chart with R and plotly



The plotly package allows to build interactive charts directly from R. Here is a application to area chart, using both the plot_ly() and ggplotly() functions.

Area chart Section About area chart

Using the ggplotly() function


This post follows the previous basic area chart built with ggplot2.

The idea is to turn the chart interactive:

  • You can zoom by selecting an area of interest
  • Hover the line to get exact time and value
  • Export to png
  • Slide axis
  • Double click to re-initialize.

This is done thanks to the ggplotly() function of the plotly package that turn any ggplot2 chart object interactive.

# Libraries
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(plotly)
library(hrbrthemes)

# Load dataset from github
data <- read.table("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/holtzy/data_to_viz/master/Example_dataset/3_TwoNumOrdered.csv", header=T)
data$date <- as.Date(data$date)

# Usual area chart
p <- data %>%
  ggplot( aes(x=date, y=value)) +
    geom_area(fill="#69b3a2", alpha=0.5) +
    geom_line(color="#69b3a2") +
    ylab("bitcoin price ($)") +
    theme_ipsum()

# Turn it interactive with ggplotly
p <- ggplotly(p)
p

# save the widget
# library(htmlwidgets)
# saveWidget(p, file=paste0( getwd(), "/HtmlWidget/ggplotlyAreachart.html"))

Using plot_ly()


The ggplotly() function above takes as input a ggplot2 chart and turn it interactive.

But the plotly package also allows to build interactive charts using its own function: plot_ly().

Pro: it will allows a greater control of chart style. See the whole API for customization.

Con: you have to learn a new API, although you probably already know ggplot2

# library
library(plotly)
 
# Create data
var1 <- seq(1,8)
var2 <- c(0,1,4,1,8,7,5,4)
var3 <- c(7,8,4,2,1,2,0,1)

# Area chart with 2 groups
p <- plot_ly(x = var1, y = var2, type="scatter", mode="markers", fill = "tozeroy")
p <- add_trace(p, x = var1, y = var3, type="scatter", mode="markers", fill = "tonexty")
p

# save the widget
# library(htmlwidgets)
# saveWidget(p, file=paste0( getwd(), "/HtmlWidget/plotlyAreachart.html"))

Related chart types


Scatter
Heatmap
Correlogram
Bubble
Connected scatter
Density 2d



Contact

This document is a work by Yan Holtz. Any feedback is highly encouraged. You can fill an issue on Github, drop me a message on Twitter, or send an email pasting yan.holtz.data with gmail.com.

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