Create timelines or Gantt charts, offline and interactive, that are usable in the ‘RStudio’ viewer pane, in ‘R Markdown’ documents and in ‘Shiny’ apps using ‘plotly.js’, a high-level, declarative charting library. Hover the mouse pointer over a point or task to show details or drag a rectangle to zoom in. Timelines (and the data behind them) can be manipulated using ‘plotly_build()’ or, once uploaded to a ‘plotly’ account, viewed and modified in a web browser.
Feedback welcome: shosaco_nospam@hotmail.com
To install the package from CRAN (v0.6.0):
install.packages("vistime")vistime(data, start = "start", end = "end", groups = "group", events = "event", colors = "color",
fontcolors = "fontcolor", tooltips = "tooltip", linewidth = NULL,
title = NULL, showLabels = TRUE, lineInterval = NULL)| parameter | optional? | data type | explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| data | mandatory | data.frame | data.frame that contains the data to be visualised |
| start | optional | character | the column name in data that contains start dates. Default: start |
| end | optional | character | the column name in data that contains end dates. Default: end |
| groups | optional | character | the column name in data to be used for grouping. Default: group |
| events | optional | character | the column name in data that contains event names. Default: event |
| colors | optional | character | the column name in data that contains colors for events. Default: color, if not present, colors are chosen via RColorBrewer. |
| fontcolors | optional | character | the column name in data that contains the font color for event labels. Default: fontcolor, if not present, color will be black. |
| tooltips | optional | character | the column name in data that contains the mouseover tooltips for the events. Default: tooltip, if not present, then tooltips are build from event name and date. Basic HTML is allowed. |
| linewidth | optional | numeric | override the calculated linewidth for events. Default: heuristic value. |
| title | optional | character | the title to be shown on top of the timeline. Default: empty. |
| showLabels | optional | logical | choose whether or not event labels shall be visible. Default: TRUE. |
| lineInterval | optional | integer | the distance of vertical lines (in seconds) to improve layout. Default: heuristic value, depending on total data range. |
vistime returns an object of class plotly and htmlwidget.
pres <- data.frame(Position = rep(c("President", "Vice"), each = 3),
Name = c("Washington", rep(c("Adams", "Jefferson"), 2), "Burr"),
start = c("1789-03-29", "1797-02-03", "1801-02-03"),
end = c("1797-02-03", "1801-02-03", "1809-02-03"),
color = c('#cbb69d', '#603913', '#c69c6e'),
fontcolor = c("black", "white", "black"))
vistime(pres, events="Position", groups="Name", title="Presidents of the USA", lineInterval = 60*60*24*365*5)
data <- read.csv(text="event,group,start,end,color
Phase 1,Project,2016-12-22,2016-12-23,#c8e6c9
Phase 2,Project,2016-12-23,2016-12-29,#a5d6a7
Phase 3,Project,2016-12-29,2017-01-06,#fb8c00
Phase 4,Project,2017-01-06,2017-02-02,#DD4B39
1-217.0,category 2,2016-12-27,2016-12-27,#90caf9
3-200,category 1,2016-12-25,2016-12-25,#1565c0
3-330,category 1,2016-12-25,2016-12-25,#1565c0
3-223,category 1,2016-12-28,2016-12-28,#1565c0
3-225,category 1,2016-12-28,2016-12-28,#1565c0
3-226,category 1,2016-12-28,2016-12-28,#1565c0
3-226,category 1,2017-01-19,2017-01-19,#1565c0
3-330,category 1,2017-01-19,2017-01-19,#1565c0
4-399.7,moon rising,2017-01-13,2017-01-13,#f44336
8-831.0,sundowner drink,2017-01-17,2017-01-17,#8d6e63
9-984.1,birthday party,2016-12-22,2016-12-22,#90a4ae
F01.9,Meetings,2016-12-26,2016-12-26,#e8a735
Z71,Meetings,2017-01-12,2017-01-12,#e8a735
B95.7,Meetings,2017-01-15,2017-01-15,#e8a735
T82.7,Meetings,2017-01-15,2017-01-15,#e8a735
Room 334,Team 1,2016-12-22,2016-12-28,#DEEBF7
Room 335,Team 1,2016-12-28,2017-01-05,#C6DBEF
Room 335,Team 1,2017-01-05,2017-01-23,#9ECAE1
Group 1,Team 2,2016-12-22,2016-12-28,#E5F5E0
Group 2,Team 2,2016-12-28,2017-01-23,#C7E9C0")
vistime(data)
Since the result of any call to vistime(...) is a Plotly object, you can use plotlyOutput in the UI and renderPlotly in the server of your Shiny app to display your chart:
library(shiny)
library(plotly)
library(vistime)
pres <- data.frame(Position = rep(c("President", "Vice"), each = 3),
Name = c("Washington", rep(c("Adams", "Jefferson"), 2), "Burr"),
start = c("1789-03-29", "1797-02-03", "1801-02-03"),
end = c("1797-02-03", "1801-02-03", "1809-02-03"),
color = c('#cbb69d', '#603913', '#c69c6e'),
fontcolor = c("black", "white", "black"))
shinyApp(
ui = plotlyOutput("myVistime"),
server = function(input, output) {
output$myVistime <- renderPlotly({
vistime(pres, events="Position", groups="Name")
})
}
)The function plotly_build turns your plot into a list. You can then use the function str to explore the structure of your plot. You can even manipulate all the elements there.
The secret is to first create a simple Plotly example yourself, turning it into a list (using plotly_build) and exploring the resulting list regarding the naming of the relevant attributes. Then manipulate or create them in your vistime example accordingly.
The following example creates the presidents example and manipulates the font size of the x axis ticks:
pres <- data.frame(Position = rep(c("President", "Vice"), each = 3),
Name = c("Washington", rep(c("Adams", "Jefferson"), 2), "Burr"),
start = c("1789-03-29", "1797-02-03", "1801-02-03"),
end = c("1797-02-03", "1801-02-03", "1809-02-03"),
color = c('#cbb69d', '#603913', '#c69c6e'),
fontcolor = c("black", "white", "black"))
p <- vistime(pres, events="Position", groups="Name", title="Presidents of the USA")
# step 1: transform into a list
pp <- plotly_build(p)
# step 2: change the font size
pp$x$layout$xaxis$tickfont <- list(size = 28)
pp
The following example creates the presidents example and manipulates the font size of the events:
pres <- data.frame(Position = rep(c("President", "Vice"), each = 3),
Name = c("Washington", rep(c("Adams", "Jefferson"), 2), "Burr"),
start = c("1789-03-29", "1797-02-03", "1801-02-03"),
end = c("1797-02-03", "1801-02-03", "1809-02-03"),
color = c('#cbb69d', '#603913', '#c69c6e'),
fontcolor = c("black", "white", "black"))
p <- vistime(pres, events="Position", groups="Name", title="Presidents of the USA")
# step 1: transform into a list
pp <- plotly_build(p)
# step 2: loop over pp$x$data, and change the font size of all text elements to 28
pp$x$data <- lapply(pp$x$data, function(x){
if(x$mode == "text"){
x$textfont$size <- 28
return(x)
}else{
return(x)
}})
pp