Plotly chart is not displayed in PyCharm

Question

How can I display interactive plotly graphs in Pycharm? I run the following code:

import plotly.offline as py
import plotly.graph_objs as go

py.init_notebook_mode(connected=True)

data = [go.Bar(
    x=['giraffes', 'orangutans', 'monkeys'],
    y=[20, 14, 23]
)]

py.iplot(data, filename="barplot")

The result in PyCharm is a blank field:

In Jupyter Notebook this code gives a (proper) interactive chart as the result.

Update: Answers from Embed Plotly HTML in PyCharm IDE don't work for me. When I use the plot() function (instead of the iplot()) it exports the chart into separate file and open a browser in a new window. The output in notebook is the filename of the generated chart. I want to include the chart into notebook and use it interactively, like in Jupyter Notebook. That answers are only about exporting the chart into separate html file.

Answer 1

With the recently released major version of Plotly 4.0, the steps below work for me with PyCharm 2019.2 on macOs Mojave using iPython notebooks from within PyCharm.

I believe that this should work on other operating systems as well with other recent versions of PyCharm supporting Jupyter notebooks.

I am using conda for package and environment management but this should work with other tools as well e.g. pip or pipenv (given that orca is installed standalone)

Here are my steps:

Create and activate conda environment:

• $ conda create -n pycharm-plotly python
• $ conda activate pycharm-plotly

Install Plotly 4.0 and its dependencies as per the plotly.py's GitHub README for Jupyter Notebook Support

• $ conda install -c plotly plotly==4.0.0
• $ conda install "notebook>=5.3" "ipywidgets>=7.5"

In addition, I found that "Plotly Orca" is required for this to work:

• $ conda install -c plotly plotly-orca psutil requests

Please note that the above works with both "Configured Server" and "Managed Server" from within PyCharm for .ipynb file extensions using the following sample code:

#%%
import plotly.graph_objects as go
import plotly.io as pio

pio.renderers.default = 'png'

fig = go.Figure(
    data=[go.Bar(y=[2, 1, 3])],
    layout_title_text="A Figure Displayed with fig.show()"
)
fig.show();

Additional Notes:

• I believe that Plotly's plot rendering doesn't work with "plain" Python files in PyCharm's Scientific mode the same way as it works for Matplotlib or Seaborn.

Answer 2

I hope someone proves me wrong, but what you are trying to accomplish does in fact seem to not be possible at the moment. I was hoping that your problem was perhaps limited to the community editions of PyCharm. The Scientific mode of PyCharm is stated to have

[...] an outstanding set of features [...]

So, I was pretty sure that upgrading to the Professional Edition Version 2019.1.2 would provide a version not lacking in any form of Jupyter Notebook support. Alas, It seems I was wrong. I have tried with various other plotly approaches, but found none that makes it possible to fire up an interactive plotly figure.

As close to any proof that I can provide:

Version confirmation:

---

Here's a test run from a Jupyter Notebook not in PyCharm with your snippet:

Plot:

---

Also, as suggested in the comments, replacing iplot with plot in plotly.offline.plot(plot(data), filename='file.html') will open a web browser and display your plot too.

Answer 3

As of plotly version 4, all you need to do is call .show() on any go.Figure:

import plotly.graph_objects as go
fig = go.Figure( go.Scatter(x=[1,2,3], y=[1,3,2] ) )
fig.show()