Simple Features in R

Introduction

In order to complete the examples below, you'll require installing additional packages (install.packages("packageName")): - sf

The examples below use the library simple features to read in the shape files before plotting the features with Plotly.

Mapbox Access Token

To plot on Mapbox maps with Plotly you may need a Mapbox account and a public Mapbox Access Token. See our Mapbox Map Layers documentation for more information. If you're using a Chart Studio Enterprise server, please see additional instructions here.

Basic sf

library(plotly)
library(sf)

nc <- sf::st_read(system.file("shape/nc.shp", package = "sf"), quiet = TRUE)

fig <- plot_ly(nc)

fig

You can also use plot_geo:

library(plotly)
library(sf)

nc <- sf::st_read(system.file("shape/nc.shp", package = "sf"), quiet = TRUE)

fig <- plot_geo(nc)

fig

Or plot_mapbox:

library(plotly)
library(sf)

mapboxToken <- paste(readLines("../.mapbox_token"), collapse="")    # You need your own token
Sys.setenv("MAPBOX_TOKEN" = mapboxToken) # for Orca

nc <- sf::st_read(system.file("shape/nc.shp", package = "sf"), quiet = TRUE)

fig <- plot_mapbox(nc, split=~NAME) 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    mapbox = list(
      zoom = 6
    )
  ) 
fig <- fig %>%
  config(mapboxAccessToken = Sys.getenv("MAPBOX_TOKEN"))

fig

Using ggplot2

Alternatively, if working in ggplot2 you can use ggplotly.

Reference

See https://plotly.com/r/reference/ for more information and chart attribute options! If you would like to read more on visualizing geo-spatial data with sf and plotly click here.

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)