Interactive matplotlib figures in Google Colab

This seems to be a backend issue. In jupyter notebooks, the command to list the different types of backends is:

%matplotlib --list

Output:

Available matplotlib backends: ['tk', 'gtk', 'gtk3', 'wx', 'qt4', 'qt5', 'qt', 'osx', 'nbagg', 'notebook', 'agg', 'svg', 'pdf', 'ps', 'inline', 'ipympl', 'widget']

However, for my system/setup, only 'notebook' and one other works. In jupyter labs, for me, none of the backends work for interactive graphs (even the 'inline' which is what they recommend).

Hope it reduces the hours of searches and permutations of install/re-installs that I went through :))

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.]

Facing the same issue (and after a lot of reading), I could not get %matplotlib ipympl/widget magic to work with Colab. However the next best solution is indeed to use Plotly, as outlined by @Nilesh Ingle in his detailed reply.

There is however a much simpler way to get Plotly up-and-running in Colab.

Please see this shared Colab notebook for a minimum example.

Python code also copied below for quick reference:

!pip install plotly

import plotly.express as px

SHEET_ID = '153pKW5IZRHwx9mLu_uU-hDSK0D3R19vR71EcgMYHn3I'

df = pd.read_csv('https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/' + SHEET_ID + '/export?format=csv')

fig = px.scatter(data_frame=df, x="x", y="y", width=1000, height=800)
fig.show()