Orca
Orca is an Electron app that generates images and reports of Plotly things like plotly.js graphs, dash apps, dashboards from the command line. Additionally, Orca is the backbone of Plotly's Image Server. Orca is also an acronym for Open-source Report Creator App.
Visit plot.ly to learn more or visit the Plotly forum.
Follow @plotlygraphs on Twitter for Orca announcements.
Installation
If you have Node.js installed (recommended v8.x), you can easily install Orca using npm as:
$ npm install -g electron@1.8.4 orca
which makes the orca
executable available in your path.
Alternatively, you can download the standalone Orca binaries corresponding to your operating system from the release page. Then, on
Mac OS
- Unzip
mac-release.zip
from yourDownloads/
folder - Double-click on
orca-X.Y.Z.dmg
file, that should open an installation window - Drag the orca icon into Applications
- In finder, go to the
Applications/
folder - Right-click on the orca icon and click on Open, this should open an Installation Succeeded window
- Open the terminal and start using Orca!
Windows
- Extract the
window-release.zip
file - In the
release
folder, double-click onorca Setup X.Y.Z
, this will create an orca icon on your Desktop - Right-click on the orca icon, then click on Properties and copy the Starts in field
- In the command prompt, run
PATH %PATH%;<paste the "Starts in" field here>
Linux
- Run
$ chmod +x orca-X.Y.Z-x86_64.AppImage
- Add it to your
$PATH
Quick start
From the command line:
$ orca graph '{ "data": [{"y": [1,2,1]}] }' -o fig.png
generates a PNG from the inputted plotly.js JSON attributes. Or,
$ orca graph https://plot.ly/~empet/14324.json --format svg
generates an SVG from a plotly.js JSON hosted on plot.ly.
To print info about the supported arguments, run:
$ orca --help
$ orca <command> --help
To call orca
from a Python script:
from subprocess import call
import json
import plotly
fig = {"data": [{"y": [1,2,1]}]}
call(['orca', 'graph', json.dumps(fig, cls=plotly.utils.PlotlyJSONEncoder)])
To call orca
from an R script:
library(plotly)
p <- plot_ly(x = 1:10, y = 1:10, color = 1:10)
b <- plotly_build(p)$x[c("data", "layout")]
json <- plotly:::to_JSON(b)
cmd <- sprintf("orca graph '%s' -o r-export-test.png", json)
system(cmd)
API usage
Using the orca
npm module allows developers to build their own
Plotly exporting tool. We export two Electron app creator methods run
and
serve
. Both methods return an Electron app
object (which is an event
listener/emitter).
To create a runner app:
// main.js
const orca = require('orca/src')
const app = orca.run({
component: 'plotly-graph',
input: 'path-to-file' || 'glob*' || url || '{data: [], layout: {}}' || [/* array of those */],
debug: true
})
app.on('after-export', (info) => {
fs.writeFile('output.png', info.body, (err) => console.warn(err))
})
// other available events:
app.on('after-export-all', () => {})
app.on('export-error', () => {})
app.on('renderer-error', () => {})
then launch it with electron main.js
Or, to create a server app:
// main.js
const orca = require('orca/src')
const app = orca.serve({
port: 9090,
component: 'component name ' || [{
name: 'plotly-graph',
path: /* path to module if none given, tries to resolve ${name} */,
route: /* default to same as ${name} */,
// other options passed to component methods
options: {
plotlyJS: '',
mathjax: '',
topojson: '',
mapboxAccessToken: ''
}
}, {
// other component
}, {
// other component ...
}],
debug: false || true
})
app.on('after-export', (info) => {
console.log(info)
})
// other available events:
app.on('after-connect', () => {})
app.on('export-error', () => {})
app.on('renderer-error', () => {})
then launch it with electron main.js
Plotly's image server
Plotly's image server is dockerized and deployed here. See the deployment/
README for more info.
System dependencies
If you don't care about exporting EPS you can skip this section.
The environment you're installing this into may require Poppler for EPS exports.
Poppler installation via Aptitude (used by some *nix/BSD, e.g. Ubuntu)
$ apt-get poppler-utils (requires `sudo` or root privileges)
Poppler installation via Homebrew (third-party package manager for Mac OS X)
$ brew install poppler
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md. You can also contact us if you would like a specific feature added.
Tests and Linux builds | Mac OS build | Windows build |
---|---|---|
License
Code released under the MIT © License.