plotly / plotly/plotly.py

Expose private attribute _config in Figure/FigureWidget class as public property

Open
#4,327 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

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

Description

Hello Dev!

I have been using Plotly's Python library and encountered an issue when trying to set the figure config while preserving on_change callbacks on the same figure object.

The root cause is that _config is currently a private attribute in the BaseFigure class, and the only api way to modify it is through the fig.show(config=config) method call. However, show() rerenders the figure and won't carry existing on_change listeners.

Therefore, in theory, using __setattr__ to modify the _config attribute directly instead of using .show(config=config) would make both setting on_change() and setting config (e.g. scrollZoom = True) work well at the same fig, and this has been proven to be the case in testing.

So I suggest to make _config a public attribute that users can directly set it without calling show() or using setattr.

Many thanks for your supper awesome work on Plotly!

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

Read packages/python/plotly/plotly/basedatatypes.py and trace BaseFigure._config, fig.show(config=...), and on_change callbacks. Establish how a public configuration setter should work without losing existing callbacks; done means Figure and FigureWidget configuration can be changed while callbacks remain attached.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data-visualization
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.