plotly / plotly/plotly.js

Scattergl freezes when y values have lots of zeros

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bug P2 performance sev-2
Dominant language
JavaScript
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

This might be more to do with plotly.js or plotly.py, but I only have dash code to generate the plot so I am posting here. I do a lot of time series plotting for my work, so Scattergl comes in handy because I routinely plot 1000's of points on a trace. After updating to dash 1.21.0, I noticed the Scattergl plots hang on hovering when my trace has lots of consecutive zero y-values. In most cases the hover event will freeze the entire page and I need to close and reopen the page.

EDIT: I pinpointed this error to the upgrade from plotly.js v2.0.0-rc.1 to plotly.js v2.0.0-rc.2. If you put rc.1 in the assets folder, scattergl works fast like in the previous version of dash. If you put rc.2 in the assets folder, the issues return.

I am not a js developer, so I don't know how best to move this issue over to plotly.js with equivalent js example. Nevertheless, I looked the difference in rc.1 and rc.2 changelogs and found that in rc.2 there is an additional reference to scattergl: Improve scattergl performance when using typed arrays #5632, maybe that is causing the issue?

Check the code below for an example:

import plotly.graph_objects as go
import numpy as np
import dash
import dash_core_components as dcc
import pandas as pd
import random

# build dataset
N = 200000
index = pd.date_range("7/1/2020", "7/1/2021", N)
vals = np.zeros(N)

# add some random non-zero data around the dataset
for i in range(50):
    start = random.randint(0, N - 50)
    vals[start : start + 50] = np.random.random(50)

# uncomment this line and see how Scattergl is much faster without the consecutive zeros
# vals = np.random.random(N)


# change Scattergl to Scatter to see how Scatter performs better with consecutive zeros
fig = go.Figure()
fig.add_trace(
    go.Scattergl(
        x=index,
        y=vals,
    )
)

app = dash.Dash()
app.layout = dcc.Graph(figure=fig)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run_server(host="0.0.0.0", port=8080, debug=True)

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by running the supplied Dash/Python reproduction with 200,000 points and consecutive zero y-values, then compare plotly.js v2.0.0-rc.1 with v2.0.0-rc.2. Read the changes related to scattergl in PR #5632; done means hovering no longer freezes the page for the reported data pattern while existing Scattergl behavior remains intact.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
javascript, python
Domain
data-visualization, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

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