Formatting Ticks in R

How to format axes ticks in R.

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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.

Tickmode - Linear

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly(
  type = "scatter",
  x = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), 
  y = c(28.8, 28.5, 37, 56.8, 69.7, 79.7, 78.5, 77.8, 74.1, 62.6, 45.3, 39.9), 
  mode = "markers+lines") 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    xaxis = list(
      dtick = 0.75, 
      tick0 = 0.5, 
      tickmode = "linear"
  ))

fig

Tickmode - Array

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly(
  type = "scatter",
  x = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), 
  y = c(28.8, 28.5, 37, 56.8, 69.7, 79.7, 78.5, 77.8, 74.1, 62.6, 45.3, 39.9), 
  mode = "markers+lines") 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    xaxis = list(
      ticktext = list("One", "Three", "Five", "Seven", "Nine", "Eleven"), 
      tickvals = list(1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11),
      tickmode = "array"
  ))

fig

Using Tickformat

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly(
  type = "scatter",
  x = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), 
  y = c(0.18, 0.38, 0.56, 0.46, 0.59, 0.4, 0.78, 0.77, 0.74, 0.42, 0.45, 0.39), 
  mode = "markers+lines") 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    yaxis = list(
        tickformat = "%"
  ))

fig

Using Tickformat (Date)

library(plotly)

df <- read.csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/finance-charts-apple.csv')

fig <- plot_ly(
  type = "scatter",
  x = df$Date, 
  y = df$AAPL.High,
  name = 'AAPL High',
  mode = "lines",
  line = list(
        color = '#17BECF'
  )) 
fig <- fig %>%
  add_trace(
    type = "scatter",
    x = df$Date, 
    y = df$AAPL.Low,
    name = 'AAPL Low',
    mode = "lines",
    line = list(
        color = '#7F7F7F'
  )) 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    title = "Time Series with Custom Date-Time Format",
    xaxis = list(
        type = 'date',
        tickformat = "%d %B (%a)<br>%Y"
  ))

fig

Tickformatstops to customize for different zoom levels

library(plotly)
df <- read.csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/finance-charts-apple.csv')
fig <- plot_ly(
  type = "scatter",
  x = df$Date, 
  y = df$mavg,
  mode = "lines") 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    xaxis = list(
      type='date',
      tickformatstops = list(
        list(
          dtickrange = list(NULL, 1000), 
          value = "%H:%M:%S.%L ms"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list(1000, 60000), 
          value = "%H:%M:%S s"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list(60000, 3600000), 
          value = "%H:%M m"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list(3600000, 86400000), 
          value = "%H:%M h"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list(86400000, 604800000), 
          value = "%e. %b d"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list(604800000, "M1"), 
          value = "%e. %b w"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list("M1", "M12"), 
          value = "%b '%y M"
        ), 
        list(
          dtickrange = list("M12", NULL), 
          value = "%Y Y"
        )
      )
    )
  )

fig

Using Exponentformat

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly(
  type = "scatter",
  x = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), 
  y = c(68000, 52000, 60000, 20000, 95000, 40000, 60000, 79000, 74000, 42000, 20000, 90000),
  mode = "markers+lines") 
fig <- fig %>%
  layout(
    yaxis = list(
      showexponent = "all",
      exponentformat = "e"
    )
  )

fig

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)