[BUG]: FigureWidget: layout.shapes not updated after drawing a path in JupyterLab
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Since Aug 3, 2026.
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Description
Description
When attempting to enable draw closed paths on a plotly.graph_objects.FigureWidget, I noticed that there was an issue when attempting to delete the existing drawn paths. It seems that while fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes") is able to detect the path drawn, this information is not relayed to fig.layout.shapes. This can be fixed by manually editing fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes"), plugging it into fig.layout.shapes, and then deleting. The manual edits are to remove the <object object at 0x000001BFE6411440> that is assigned to both "name" and "legendwidth".
Steps to reproduce
import plotly.graph_objects as go
import ipywidgets as widgets
from IPython.display import display
fig = go.FigureWidget(
go.Heatmap(
z=[[1, 2], [3, 4]],
showscale=False,
)
)
fig.update_layout(
dragmode="drawclosedpath",
newshape=dict(
line=dict(color="red", width=2)
)
)
fail_clear_button = widgets.Button(description="Clear ROI (Fails)")
working_clear_button = widgets.Button(description="Clear ROI (Works)")
out = widgets.Output()
def clear_roi(_):
with out:
print("layout.shapes:", fig.layout.shapes)
print("JSON shapes:", fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes"))
with fig.batch_update():
fig.layout.shapes = []
print("After update_layout")
print("layout.shapes:", fig.layout.shapes)
print("JSON shapes:", fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes"))
def clear_roi_alt(_):
with out:
print("layout.shapes:", fig.layout.shapes)
print("JSON shapes:", fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes"))
json_shapes = fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes", [])
for s in json_shapes:
s['legendwidth'] = 0
s['name'] = ''
fig.layout.shapes = json_shapes
print("After pulling from JSON")
print("layout.shapes:", fig.layout.shapes)
print("JSON shapes:", fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes"))
fig.layout.shapes = []
print("After clearing")
print("layout.shapes:", fig.layout.shapes)
print("JSON shapes:", fig.layout.to_plotly_json().get("shapes"))
fail_clear_button.on_click(clear_roi)
working_clear_button.on_click(clear_roi_alt)
display(widgets.VBox([fail_clear_button, working_clear_button, fig, out]))
Notes
Python: 3.12.13
Plotly: 6.9.0
JupyterLab: 4.5.6
ipywidgets: 8.1.8
OS: Windows-11-10.0.26100-SP0
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