plotly / plotly/plotly.py

Sorted categories (Pandas `Categorical` series) aren't sorted in chart

Open
#3,802 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug P3
Dominant language
Python
Stars
18.8k
Forks
2.8k
Avg merge
16h 26m
Merged PRs (30d)
21

Description

I am plotting a chart with a pd.Categorical series on the x-axis. The category has a sort defined.

Expected behaviour: the axis is sorted as per the underlying category definition
Actual behaviour: the axis is sorted by the order of the data

df = pd.DataFrame(
    dict(
        Cost=[10, 20, 15, 2, 9],
        Rating=pd.Categorical(
            values=["High", "Low", "Medium", "Low", "Medium"],
            categories=["Low", "Medium", "High"],
            ordered=True,
        ),
    )
)

fig = px.scatter(df, x="Rating", y="Cost")

This fix would be fairly simple, I think, something like this, where series is whatever's being rendered to the xaxis (or y, or legend, etc)

if isinstance(series.dtype, pd.CategoricalDtype) and series.cat.ordered:
    fig.update_xaxes(
        categoryorder="array",
        categoryarray=series.cat.categories,
    )

Plotly version: 5.9.0.

I've noticed a number of bugs relating to pd.Categorical and pd.PeriodIndex, are there plans for better Pandas support, or is that not an area of focus?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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

Reproduce the issue with the provided pandas DataFrame and px.scatter(df, x="Rating", y="Cost") entry point, then trace how categorical axis values are handled. Confirm that ordered categories determine the axis order and add regression coverage; done means the chart follows Low, Medium, High rather than data order.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
pandas, python
Domain
data-visualization
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.