Plotly as png in knitr/rmarkdown

Question

The following Rmarkdown renders the plotly 3D graph in HTML, but not in PDF.

Testing plotly

```{r}
library(plotly)
p <- plot_ly(data=iris, x=~Sepal.Lengt         


        

Answer 1

I have created a little workaround, which saves the plotly images locally as png-file and imports it back to the RMD file. You need the package webshot, which you can load via:

install.packages("webshot")

Further more, you need to install phantomjs via

webshot::install_phantomjs()

Then (when phantomjs is in your PATH), you can create your RMD file:

---
title: "Untitled"
output: pdf_document
---

```{r}
library(plotly)
p <- plot_ly(economics, x = ~date, y = ~unemploy / pop)

tmpFile <- tempfile(fileext = ".png")
export(p, file = tmpFile)
```
![Caption for the picture.](`r tmpFile`)

This works for me .. perhaps it's a workaround for you, too!