Interactive Matplotlib Figures in Google Colab

Interactive matplotlib figures in Google Colab

Below is an example of creating interactive iplot() in Plotly and cufflinks() on Google Colab Notebook. Used functions and suggestions from the answer [1, 2]

The key seems to be to include configure_plotly_browser_state() in the cell that does the plotting.

Code below should work:

Import libraries

import datetime
from datetime import date
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from plotly import __version__
%matplotlib inline

import plotly.offline as pyo
import plotly.graph_objs as go
from plotly.offline import iplot

import cufflinks as cf
from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, plot, iplot 


cf.go_offline()

Set notebook to false

init_notebook_mode(connected=False)

Create function for Colab
copied from: [1, 2]

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>
        '''))

Create sample dataframe

Data source: Annual rainfuall data for the Peachtree City, GA from National Weather Service [3].

df = pd.DataFrame({
    'month': ['January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December'],
    'Year_2018': [3.26, 6.11, 4.86, 6.53, 4.45, 3.86, 8.04, 7.59, 1.48, 4.75, 7.27, 11.83],
    'Year_1996': [8.26, 3.82, 6.42, 2.91, 2.12, 1.70, 2.14, 4.66, 4.32, 0.89, 3.22, 4.14]
}
)
df

Create an interactive iplot

configure_plotly_browser_state()
df.iplot(kind='line',x='month',y=['Year_2018', 'Year_1996'], color=['white', 'gold'], 
theme='solar', mode='markers+lines',title='Annual Rainfall in the city Peachtree City, GA')
plt.show()

Output:

[Note: The x, y, titles do not show up! at the moment.]

Generate interactive plot using mne package in google colab

Solution

As far as I know, Google Colab currently does not allow using %matplotlib notebook as a backend. Typically, one uses %matplotlib notebook for intercativity while making matplotlib plots. It appears that the package you are using makes use of matplotlib for visualizations. So, for now, you are out of luck!

You will have use other libraries: altair, plotly, bokeh, etc. to achieve interactivity on Colab.

See this colab notebook: Charting in Colaboratory. There are detailed examples for various visualization packages to get you started in the colab-notebook.

Sample Altair Code for Interactive Plot on Colab

Altair is a declarative visualization library for creating interactive visualizations in Python, and is installed and enabled in Colab by default.

For example, here is an interactive scatter plot:

import altair as alt
from vega_datasets import data
cars = data.cars()

alt.Chart(cars).mark_point().encode(
    x='Horsepower',
    y='Miles_per_Gallon',
    color='Origin',
).interactive()

References

I would recommend you to take a look at the following resources as well.

1. Charting in Colaboratory - colab-notebook-example

2. Interactive matplotlib figures in Google Colab

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