How to display plotly outputs in google collaboratory notebooks?

Question

I searched whole day how to display the outputs of plotly plots in google colaboratory jupyter notebooks. There is a stackoverflow question and also official tutorial from google colaboratory but both of them did not work for me.

official link:
https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/charts.ipynb#scrollTo=hFCg8XrdO4xj

stackoverflow question:
Plotly notebook mode with google colaboratory
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/14oudHx5e5r7hm1QcbZ24FVHXgVPD0k8f#scrollTo=8RCjUVpi2_xd

The built-in google colaboratory plotly version is 1.12.12.

Test plotly version

import plotly
plotly.__version__
1.12.12

Load libraries

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

Mount google drive

from google.colab import drive
drive.mount('/content/drive')

dat_dir = 'drive/My Drive/Colab Notebooks/data/'

Official google colaboratory method (FAILED)

# https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/charts.ipynb#scrollTo=hFCg8XrdO4xj
def enable_plotly_in_cell():
  import IPython
  from plotly.offline import init_notebook_mode
  display(IPython.core.display.HTML('''
        <script src="/static/components/requirejs/require.js"></script>
  '''))
  init_notebook_mode(connected=False)

Test official suggestion (FAILED)

import plotly.plotly as py
import numpy as np
from plotly.offline import iplot
from plotly.graph_objs import Contours, Histogram2dContour, Marker, Scatter

enable_plotly_in_cell()

x = np.random.randn(2000)
y = np.random.randn(2000)
iplot([Histogram2dContour(x=x, y=y, contours=Contours(coloring='heatmap')),
       Scatter(x=x, y=y, mode='markers', marker=Marker(color='white', size=3, opacity=0.3))], show_link=False)

Stackoverflow Bob Smith Method

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47230817/plotly-notebook-mode-with-google-colaboratory
def configure_plotly_browser_state():
  import IPython
  display(IPython.core.display.HTML('''
        <script src="/static/components/requirejs/require.js"></script>
        <script>
          requirejs.config({
            paths: {
              base: '/static/base',
              plotly: 'https://cdn.plot.ly/plotly-1.5.1.min.js?noext',
            },
          });
        </script>
        '''))

Test Bob Smith method (FAILED)

# https://colab.research.google.com/drive/14oudHx5e5r7hm1QcbZ24FVHXgVPD0k8f#scrollTo=8RCjUVpi2_xd
import plotly.plotly as py
import numpy as np
from plotly.offline import init_notebook_mode, iplot
from plotly.graph_objs import Contours, Histogram2dContour, Marker, Scatter

configure_plotly_browser_state()

init_notebook_mode(connected=False)

x = np.random.randn(2000)
y = np.random.randn(2000)
iplot([Histogram2dContour(x=x, y=y, contours=Contours(coloring='heatmap')),
       Scatter(x=x, y=y, mode='markers', marker=Marker(color='white', size=3, opacity=0.3))], show_link=False)

Questions

How to display the plotly output in google colaboratory?

Is is possible ? If so which version of plotly or cufflinks is working for you?

If it is not possible to display, can we save the output file as .html in our google drive and open them manually and see them?

I appreciate your help.

Answer 1

plotly version 4.x

As of version 4, plotly renderers know about Colab, so the following is sufficient to display a figure in both Colab and Jupyter (and other notebooks like Kaggle, Azure, nteract):

import plotly.graph_objects as go
fig = go.Figure( go.Scatter(x=[1,2,3], y=[1,3,2] ) )
fig.show()

plotly version 3.x

I was also struggling to display the plotly graphs in Google colab and stumbled upon this thread where you explained the problems with different solutions over the net. Feelings are the same for each one of the solutions. Finally, my search ended when I came across this video.

I followed his approach (might be similar to the ones you already tried) and this worked for me.

1. Upgrade plotly in colab thru !pip install plotly --upgrade and restart runtime as suggested.
2. Comment the upgrade option before re-running your notebook
3. Define the function configure_plotly_browser_state()
4. Invoke plotly libraries

5. Call function and notebook mode like below in every cell where you want to call iplot

   configure_plotly_browser_state()

   init_notebook_mode(connected=False)

   iplot(XXXXXX)

Just import plotly libraries

Please let me know if this helps :)