Intro to Animations in R

How to create animations in R with Plotly.

New to Plotly?

Plotly is a free and open-source graphing library for R. We recommend you read our Getting Started guide for the latest installation or upgrade instructions, then move on to our Plotly Fundamentals tutorials or dive straight in to some Basic Charts tutorials.

Frames

Now, along with data and layout, frames is added to the keys that figure allows. Your frames key points to a list of figures, each of which will be cycled through upon instantiation of the plot.

Basic Example

library(plotly)

df <- data.frame(
  x = c(1,2,1), 
  y = c(1,2,1), 
  f = c(1,2,3)
)

fig <- df %>%
  plot_ly(
    x = ~x,
    y = ~y,
    frame = ~f,
    type = 'scatter',
    mode = 'markers',
    showlegend = F
  )

fig

Mulitple Trace Animations

library(plotly)
library(gapminder)

df <- gapminder 
fig <- df %>%
  plot_ly(
    x = ~gdpPercap, 
    y = ~lifeExp, 
    size = ~pop, 
    color = ~continent, 
    frame = ~year, 
    text = ~country, 
    hoverinfo = "text",
    type = 'scatter',
    mode = 'markers'
  )
fig <- fig %>% layout(
    xaxis = list(
      type = "log"
    )
  )

fig

Add Animation Options

library(plotly)



fig <- fig %>%
  animation_opts(
    1000, easing = "elastic", redraw = FALSE
  )

fig

Add Button Options

library(plotly)



fig <- fig %>%
  animation_button(
    x = 1, xanchor = "right", y = 0, yanchor = "bottom"
  )

fig

Add Slider Options

library(plotly)


fig <- fig %>%
  animation_slider(
    currentvalue = list(prefix = "YEAR ", font = list(color="red"))
  )

fig

Advanced Example

library(plotly)

df <- gapminder 
fig <- df %>%
  plot_ly(
    x = ~gdpPercap, 
    y = ~lifeExp, 
    size = ~pop, 
    color = ~continent, 
    frame = ~year, 
    text = ~country, 
    hoverinfo = "text",
    type = 'scatter',
    mode = 'markers'
  )
fig <- fig %>% layout(
    xaxis = list(
      type = "log"
    )
  )
fig <- fig %>% animation_opts(
    1000, easing = "elastic", redraw = FALSE
  )
fig <- fig %>% animation_button(
    x = 1, xanchor = "right", y = 0, yanchor = "bottom"
  )
fig <- fig %>% animation_slider(
    currentvalue = list(prefix = "YEAR ", font = list(color="red"))
  )

fig

Reference

To read more on animations see The Plotly Book.

What About Dash?

Dash for R is an open-source framework for building analytical applications, with no Javascript required, and it is tightly integrated with the Plotly graphing library.

Learn about how to install Dash for R at https://dashr.plot.ly/installation.

Everywhere in this page that you see fig, you can display the same figure in a Dash for R application by passing it to the figure argument of the Graph component from the built-in dashCoreComponents package like this:

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly() 
# fig <- fig %>% add_trace( ... )
# fig <- fig %>% layout( ... ) 

library(dash)
library(dashCoreComponents)
library(dashHtmlComponents)

app <- Dash$new()
app$layout(
    htmlDiv(
        list(
            dccGraph(figure=fig) 
        )
     )
)

app$run_server(debug=TRUE, dev_tools_hot_reload=FALSE)