With this package, your can use tabular data to create interactive timelines or Gantt charts that are usable in the ‘RStudio’ viewer pane, in ‘R Markdown’ documents and in ‘Shiny’ apps. You can hover the mouse pointer over a point or task to show details or drag a rectangle to zoom in. Timelines and their components can afterwards be manipulated using ‘plotly_build()’, which transforms the plot into a mutable list.
If you find vistime useful, please consider supporting its development: 
Feedback welcome: shosaco_nospam@hotmail.com
To install the package (v0.8.0.9000):
First, we need to load vistime:
The basic syntax and all possible arguments are:
| 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. |
| show_labels | optional | logical | choose whether or not event labels shall be visible. Default: TRUE. |
| background_lines | optional | integer | the number of vertical lines to draw in the background to demonstrate structure. Default: 10. |
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")
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
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
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")
vistime(data)
Once created, you can use plotly::export() for saving your vistime chart as PDF, PNG or JPEG:
Note that export requires the webshot package and additional arguments like width or height can be used (?webshot for the details).
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$myVistime <- renderPlotly({
vistime(pres, events="Position", groups="Name")
})
}
)The function plotly_build turns your plot into a list. You can then use the function str to explore the structure of your plot. You can even manipulate all the elements there.
The key is to first create a simple Plotly example yourself, turning it into a list (using plotly_build) and exploring the resulting list regarding the naming of the relevant attributes. Then manipulate or create them in your vistime example accordingly. Below are some examples of common solutions.
The following example creates the presidents example and manipulates the font size of the x axis ticks:
pres <- data.frame(Position = rep(c("President", "Vice"), each = 3),
Name = c("Washington", rep(c("Adams", "Jefferson"), 2), "Burr"),
start = c("1789-03-29", "1797-02-03", "1801-02-03"),
end = c("1797-02-03", "1801-02-03", "1809-02-03"),
color = c('#cbb69d', '#603913', '#c69c6e'),
fontcolor = c("black", "white", "black"))
p <- vistime(pres, events="Position", groups="Name", title="Presidents of the USA")
# step 1: transform into a list
pp <- plotly_build(p)
# step 2: change the font size
pp$x$layout$xaxis$tickfont <- list(size = 28)
pp
We have several y-axes, that’s why we need to change the font size in all of them:
# loop through the yaxes and change the font size for each element:
for(i in grep("yaxis*", names(pp$x$layout))){
pp$x$layout[[i]]$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
for(i in 1:length(pp$x$data)){
if(pp$x$data[[i]]$mode == "text") pp$x$data[[i]]$textfont$size <- 28
}
#' # or, using purrr:
#' text_idx <- which(purrr::map_chr(pp$x$data, "mode") == "text")
#' for(i in text_idx) pp$x$data[[i]]$textfont$size <- 28
#' pp
pp
The following example a simple example using markers and manipulates the size of the markers:
dat <- data.frame(event = 1:4, start = c("2019-01-01", "2019-01-10"))
p <- vistime(dat)
# step 1: transform into a list
pp <- plotly_build(p)
# step 2: loop over pp$x$data, and change the marker size of all text elements to 50px
for(i in 1:length(pp$x$data)){
if(pp$x$data[[i]]$mode == "markers") pp$x$data[[i]]$marker$size <- 10
}
pp
# or, using purrr:
# marker_idx <- which(purrr::map_chr(pp$x$data, "mode") == "markers")
# for(i in marker_idx) pp$x$data[[i]]$marker$size <- 10
# pp