Hi all,
First, for those that missed today's Bokeh webinar, here is a link to the video:
And here are some answers to the great questions from the webinar we didn’t get to answer due to the technical problems at the end.
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Q: Seaborn doesn't incorporate bokeh - is Bokeh being used to wrap seaborn/matplotlib?
A: Bokeh has some basic support for converting Matplotlib plots directly into Bokeh plots. See our examples gallery, for example: http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/docs/gallery/violin.html More and better matplotlib coming when MPL implements their new serialization scheme.
Q: How can you schedule your python code to run at intervals in Bokeh? Will the update with cpu scheduled data be real time?
A: Hopefully you saw this in the streaming example with the wedges, but just to reiterate: you can just use time.sleep() in your python code. In 0.11 (coming January 6) there is a new add_periodic_callback that makes this even easier.
Q: A lot of fiddling to figure it out is needed to figure out the documentation. Can you suggest where we can find more examples and more information to create customized plots
A: There are actually a lot of docs for bokeh, both in terms of the API reference and user guides, as well as a live gallery at Gallery — Bokeh 2.4.2 Documentation. However, we do appreciate that with a library of this amount of capability, what we need are things more akin to “cookbooks” that show people how to compose plots that address certain kinds of tasks. Right now, you can see many more examples in the Github repo, e.g. bokeh/examples at 0.10.0 · bokeh/bokeh · GitHub has the examples for version 0.10.
Q: Can you make a server-style application run in jupyter notebook, or does it need to run from the command line?
A: Yes you can. You need to run the bokeh server explicitly from the command line, and then write Python code in the notebook that pushes data to it and such, but the app output can be embedded directly in the notebook. Additionally improved notebook comms are coming which will make integration with native Jupyter notebook interactors even better.
Q: Is it possible to interactively change the scale of the plots (linear, log, semilog)?
A: Yes you can. We haven’t shown any examples of this, but the type of scaling on each axis, as well as any axis properties, are all just attributes that can be modified dynamically, and will get reflected in the browser.
Q: Do we always need to run the Bokeh server?
A: No. Bokeh can generate standalone interactive plots that are fully contained in an HTML file or even embedded in the output cell of a notebook. The bokeh server is only necessary when you want to have Python code get called in response to user interaction, or you want to have Python code that streams or loops data up to the browser. In any of the examples where we are using a CustomJS callback, the interactivity did not require the bokeh server. So, for example, you send them in an email and they would retain all their interactivity.
Q: How can you run the same python script again and again at particular time interval - if a server is not required?
A: It is necessary to run the Bokeh server in order to run any python code, and for certain other kinds of plots and capabilities.
Q: Is there ability to add cool transitions while sliding between years? For GapMinder
A: Yes you could drive this “by hand” with a little JS code, or from python code if you use a Bokeh server. We plan to make this even simpler with built in animation transitions and easing functions in the near future.
Q: Are all visualizations and the interface mobile responsive?
A: Some of the tools are mobile-friendly (both touch and size-responsive), but it’s not something we’ve optimized for at this time.
Q: Have you used Bokeh in data driven mobile applications?
A: Bokeh currently has limited mobile/touch capability, but we intend to make mobile support completely supported/maintained under test in 2016
Q: Can you point to an example app for real time twitter data using bokeh?
A: One difficulty with OSS development is that people don’t always come talk to you when things “just work”. So I am not sure of one offhand, but we’d be happy to help answer questions to get you started making one. (Especially if we can show it off later!)
Q: How does Bokeh relate/compare to other interactive plotting libraries like plotly?
A: Bokeh is similar to plotly, but all of Bokeh, including the Bokeh server and the upcoming DataShader library is completely open source (BSD licensed).
Q: What are the limitations with Bokeh, when compared to the traditional method of creating web applications?
A: Bokeh doesn’t really let you make web applications in the traditional sense. As a web developer, I think of Bokeh more like d3 in the sense that it is a library that I work with to make visualizations. If I’m writing a web application, I want a framework that handles requests, sessions, authentication, maybe has an ORM etc. bokeh-server does one thing which is to keep a synchronous connection between plot(s) on a client and the server.
A: You could use bokeh-server directly to write a very tight data driven application with a few pages, but more than that I’d be looking to use a normal web framework and embed bokeh into it.
A: You may want to embed bokeh charts as standalone charts that are just powered by data from your web application’s database. Or you may want to build something more dynamic that leverages bokeh-server and your web application - a demonstration of that will be coming with the 0.11 release.
Q: It is said in Jupyter at the upper right that you use Python 2. Is there a need to use Python 2 for bokeh, rather than the 3?
A: Bokeh is fully supported and continuously tested with Python 2.7 and Python 3.4 and Python 3.5. Bokeh may function with other versions of Python (including PyPy) but these configurations are not guaranteed.
Q: Does Bokeh support 3d plotting?
A: Not yet, but this is a longer term goal.
Q: Is there a Shiny equivalent product in python ecosystem?
A: Our vision is for Bokeh Server to fill this capability. When combined with the new Jupyter workbook with its new layout system that we are helping to develop, python will have a rock solid story in this arena, with capabilities well beyond what Shiny can do.
Q: How can you embed bokeh plots on a website? Does it make HTML/embed codes?
A: Information about embedding standalone Bokeh app is here: Embedding Bokeh content — Bokeh 2.4.2 Documentation
Q: Hello. I am a Django developer really interested in using Bokeh for online visualization. What would be the best way for serving Bokeh plots within a Django project?
A: In addition to the embedding section of the userguide (above) the 0.11 release coming on January 6 will also have complete Django example integrating with the Bokeh server. But in general the outline goes like this: include BokehJS (from CDN) in your head, use ‘bokeh.embed.components’ in your view code, and pass the resulting script and div into context and use them in your template.
Q: For a simple chart, how many points can you handle before performance is an issue? And what can you do then to scale up further?
A: Standard Bokeh with HTML canvas can easily display tens of thousands of points. The Bokeh WebGL backend can scale up to hundreds of thousands of points (but only supports a subset of glyphs yet). The DataShader library arriving in early 2016 extends this range to millions to billions of points.
Q: Can bokeh be used to display spatial data?
A: Yes, we have support for Google Maps together with Bokeh plots and we just added a new generic Tile Renderer to be able to use many tile sources, as well as a GeoJSON data source. Many more GIS features coming in 2016.
Q: Is is possible to write CustomJS that interact with the CustomJS slider? ie in every second increase the year?
A: Yes definitely, the slider can be updated programmatically from Javascript (e.g., slider.set(‘value’, 10) ) or from python if you are using the Bokeh server, (e.g, slider.value = 10).
Q: Does Bokeh provide functions that display data arrays in a spreadsheet (cellular) format? I want to eliminate the Excel auto-import portion of my data display requirements, and also get the benefits of dynamic data display that Bokeh provides.
A: There are lots of great Open Source tools for integrating Python and Excel, you can a list of some at http://docs.continuum.io/anaconda/excel Look specifically for tighter Bokeh/Excel integrations coming in 2016.
Q: CustomJS with a Python function is very exciting since one can avoid writing JS, but the python allowed is limited. I'd love to use callbacks with pandas code to update data plotted. Any chance this will happen down the road?
A: If you need to run real python code (e.g. interact with Pandas) then you will need to use the Bokeh server.
Q: What limits the frame rate for the animations shown?
A: The framerates are actually at 30+ FPS; however, the GotoWebinar software is not able to broadcast at that framework. They run very very smoothly! (Even the spectrogram.) When we make the recording of the webinar available, you can see that they are running at full framerate.
Q: Say I have a streaming data coming in every 0.1 second, what do I need to pay attention to about the computational load using Bokeh? My past experience with matplotlib is the plot freezes after running for a while?
A: The exact answer depends on particulars of your situation, of course. But as an example the spectrogram has been run continuously for 8+ hours at conferences, with ~30 updates per second.
Q: Some time ago I was planning to use Bokeh to make contour plots...I've noted a lack of a "cmap" and data tips... Are there plans to add those features?
A: My understanding of the question is: will hover tips work with “colormap image plots”? If so, yes, we intend to add hover capability to image plots in early 2016
Q: Hello, it looks like the gapminder notebook require the utils.py package. Is it available
A: You can download utils.py here: Jupyter Notebook Viewer
Q: Can you zoom in the right plot and have it reflect in the left? Or is it monodirectional?
A: You can definitely link plot ranges trivially by sharing ranges between them, see Making Interactions — Bokeh 2.4.2 Documentation But you can also trigger more sophisticated interactions too, see: Making Interactions — Bokeh 2.4.2 Documentation
Q: Need rbokeh website
A: R Interface for Bokeh • rbokeh
Q: How can Bokeh be installed outside of Anaconda for R or Python...I understand the pip method for Python.
A: “pip install bokeh” should grab everything you need
