Plotly.rs

Plotly for Rust

Getting Started | Recipes | API Docs | Changelog

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Basic Usage
  • Exporting an Interactive Plot
  • Exporting Static Images with Kaleido
  • Usage Within a Wasm Environment
• Crate Feature Flags
• Contributing
• Code of Conduct
• License

Introduction

A plotting library for Rust powered by Plotly.js.

Documentation and numerous interactive examples are available in the Plotly.rs Book, the examples/ directory and docs.rs.

For changes since the last version, please consult the changelog.

Basic Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
plotly = "0.11"

Exporting a single Interactive Plot

Any figure can be saved as an HTML file using the Plot.write_html() method. These HTML files can be opened in any web browser to access the fully interactive figure.

use plotly::{Plot, Scatter};

let mut plot = Plot::new();
let trace = Scatter::new(vec![0, 1, 2], vec![2, 1, 0]);
plot.add_trace(trace);

plot.write_html("out.html");

By default, the Plotly JavaScript library and some MathJax components will always be included via CDN, which results in smaller file-size, but slightly slower first load as the JavaScript libraries have to be downloaded first. Alternatively, to embed the JavaScript libraries (several megabytes in size) directly into the HTML file, plotly-rs must be compiled with the feature flag plotly_embed_js. With this feature flag the Plotly and MathJax JavaScript libraries are directly embedded in the generated HTML file. It is still possible to use the CDN version, by using the use_cdn_js method.

// <-- Create a `Plot` -->

plot.use_cdn_js();
plot.write_html("out.html");

If you only want to view the plot in the browser quickly, use the Plot.show() method.

// <-- Create a `Plot` -->

plot.show(); // The default web browser will open, displaying an interactive plot

Exporting Static Images with Kaleido

To save a plot as a static image, the kaleido feature is required as well as installing an external dependency.

Kaleido external dependency

When developing applications for your host, enabling both kaleido and kaleido_download features will ensure that the kaleido binary is downloaded for your system's architecture at compile time. After download, it is unpacked into a specific path, e.g., on Linux this is /home/USERNAME/.config/kaleido. With these two features enabled, static images can be exported as described in the next section as long as the application run on the same host where where this crate was compiled on.

When the applications developed with plotly.rs are intended for other targets or when the user wants to control where the kaleido binary is installed then Kaleido must be manually downloaded and installed. Setting the environment variable KALEIDO_PATH=/path/installed/kaleido/ will ensure that applications that were built with the kaleido feature enabled can locate the kaleido executable and use it to generate static images.

Kaleido binaries are available on Github release page. It currently supports Linux(x86_64), Windows(x86_64) and MacOS(x86_64/aarch64).

Exporting a Static Images

Enable the kaleido feature and opt in for automatic downloading of the kaleido binaries by doing the following

# Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
plotly = { version = "0.11", features = ["kaleido", "kaleido_download"] }

Alternatively, enable only the kaleido feature and manually install Kaleido.

# Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
plotly = { version = "0.11", features = ["kaleido"] }

With the feature enabled, plots can be saved as any of png, jpeg, webp, svg, pdf and eps. Note that the plot will be a static image, i.e. they will be non-interactive.

Exporting a simple plot looks like this:

use plotly::{ImageFormat, Plot};

let mut plot = Plot::new();
let trace = Scatter::new(vec![0, 1, 2], vec![2, 1, 0]);
plot.add_trace(trace);

plot.write_image("out.png", ImageFormat::PNG, 800, 600, 1.0);

Usage Within a Wasm Environment

Using Plotly.rs in a Wasm-based frontend framework is possible by enabling the wasm feature:

# Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
plotly = { version = "0.11", features = ["wasm"] }

First, make sure that you have the Plotly JavaScript library in your base HTML template:

 <!-- index.html -->

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <!-- snip -->
        <script src="https://cdn.plot.ly/plotly-2.14.0.min.js"></script>
    </head>
    <!-- snip -->
</html>

A simple Plot component would look as follows, using Yew as an example frontend framework:

use plotly::{Plot, Scatter};
use yew::prelude::*;


#[function_component(PlotComponent)]
pub fn plot_component() -> Html {
    let p = yew_hooks::use_async::<_, _, ()>({
        let id = "plot-div";
        let mut plot = Plot::new();
        let trace = Scatter::new(vec![0, 1, 2], vec![2, 1, 0]);
        plot.add_trace(trace);

        async move {
            plotly::bindings::new_plot(id, &plot).await;
            Ok(())
        }
    });


        use_effect_with_deps(move |_| {
            p.run();
            || ()
        }, (),
    );


    html! {
        <div id="plot-div"></div>
    }
}

More detailed standalone examples can be found in the examples/ directory.

Crate Feature Flags

The following feature flags are available:

kaleido

Adds plot save functionality to the following formats: png, jpeg, webp, svg, pdf and eps.

Requires Kaleido to have been previously installed on the host machine. See the following feature flag and Kaleido external dependency.

kaleido_download

Enable download and install of Kaleido binary at build time from Kaleido releases on the host machine. See Kaleido external dependency for more details.

plotly_image

Adds trait implementations so that image::RgbImage and image::RgbaImage can be used more directly with the plotly::Image trace.

plotly_ndarray

Adds support for creating plots directly using ndarray types.

plotly_embed_js

By default, the CDN version of plotly.js is used in the library and in the generated HTML files. This feature can be used to opt in for embedding plotly.min.js in the generated HTML files. The benefit is that the plot will load faster in the browser.

However, there are two downsides of using this feature flag, one is that the resulting html will be much larger, as a copy of the plotly.min.js library is embedded in each HTML file. The second, more relevant, is that a copy of the plotly.min.js library needs to be compiled in the plotly-rs library itself which increases the size by approx 3.5 Mb.

When the feature is enabled, users can still opt in for the CDN version by using the method use_cdn_js.

Note that when using Plot::to_inline_html(), it is assumed that the plotly.js library is already in scope within the HTML file, so enabling this feature flag will have no effect.

wasm

Enables compilation for the wasm32-unknown-unknown target and provides access to a bindings module containing wrappers around functions exported by the plotly.js library.

Contributing

• If you've spotted a bug or would like to see a new feature, please submit an issue on the issue tracker.

• Pull requests are welcome, see the contributing guide for more information.

Code of Conduct

See the Code of Conduct for more information.

License

Plotly.rs is distributed under the terms of the MIT license, see LICENSE.