Plot CSV Data in R

How to create charts from csv files with Plotly and R


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CSV or comma-delimited-values is a very popular format for storing structured data. In this tutorial, we will see how to plot beautiful graphs using csv data. We will learn how to import csv data from an external source (a URL), and plot it using Plotly.

First we import the data and look at it.

data <- read.csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/2014_apple_stock.csv')
head(data)
##       AAPL_x   AAPL_y
## 1 2014-01-02 77.44539
## 2 2014-01-03 77.04558
## 3 2014-01-06 74.89697
## 4 2014-01-07 75.85646
## 5 2014-01-08 75.09195
## 6 2014-01-09 76.20263

Plot from CSV with Plotly

library(plotly)
data <- read.csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/2014_apple_stock.csv')
fig <- plot_ly(x = as.Date(data$AAPL_x), y = data$AAPL_y, type = 'scatter', mode = 'lines'
               , name = 'Share Prices (in USD)')%>% 
  layout(title = 'Apple Share Prices over time (2014)',
         plot_bgcolor='#e5ecf6',  
         xaxis = list(  
           title = 'AAPL_x',
           zerolinecolor = '#ffff',  
           zerolinewidth = 2,  
           gridcolor = 'ffff'),  
         yaxis = list(  
           title = 'AAPL_y',
           zerolinecolor = '#ffff',  
           zerolinewidth = 2,  
           gridcolor = 'ffff'),
         showlegend = TRUE, width = 1100)
fig

Reference

See https://plotly.com/r/getting-started for more information about Plotly's R API!

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)