Repository navigation
Bug report – colour-mapped markers on a date x-axis reset axis to 1970 #2446
Description
Hi
thank you for the great work on plotly for R. While building a simple time-series chart I noticed that mapping a numeric column to color inside a marker trace shifts the x-axis limits to the Unix epoch (1970-01-01). The same variable works fine when mapped to size. The reproducible examples below illustrate the behaviour. Any guidance or fix would be highly appreciated.
Reprex
library(plotly)
library(data.table)
# dummy data -------------------------------------------------------------
set.seed(1)
dt <- data.table(
y = cumsum(rnorm(200)),
rank = sample(1:100, 200, TRUE),
size_metric = rpois(200, 10),
datetime = seq(as.Date("2022-01-01"), by = "day", length.out = 200)
)
# -------- WORKS (no colour mapping) -------------------------------------
plot_ly(dt, type = "scatter", mode = "markers") |>
add_trace(x = ~datetime, y = ~y,
name = "points", size = ~size_metric) |>
add_trace(x = ~datetime, y = ~y,
name = "line", mode = "lines",
line = list(color = "black"))
# x-axis shows correct 2022-20xx window
# -------- WORKS (size mapped to same field) -----------------------------
plot_ly(dt, type = "scatter", mode = "markers") |>
add_trace(x = ~datetime, y = ~y,
name = "points", size = ~rank) |>
add_trace(x = ~datetime, y = ~y,
name = "line", mode = "lines",
line = list(color = "black"))
# ✓ still correct axis
# -------- FAILS (colour mapping) ----------------------------------------
plot_ly(dt, type = "scatter", mode = "markers") |>
add_trace(x = ~datetime, y = ~y,
name = "points", colour = ~rank) |>
add_trace(x = ~datetime, y = ~y,
name = "line", mode = "lines",
line = list(color = "black"))
# ✗ x-axis resets to 1970-01-01Expected
Axis limits stay within the data’s date range (2022-01-01 … 2022-07-20).
Actual
When colour = ~rank is used, the x-axis jumps to epoch 1970-01-01.
Tested with
packageVersion("plotly") # 4.10.4
R.version.string # R 4.3.2 (MacOS Darwing)
Activity
gvwilson commentedon Jun 20, 2025
thanks for the issue @phisanti - plotly is no longer supporting plotly.R directly, but hopefully someone from the community will be able to pick this up
phisanti commentedon Jun 23, 2025
Ok, so just to clarify, the plotly.R package is not orphaned and would not be supported any longer by Plotly?
Fix #2446: Date class preserved in colorbar trace
Add tests for bug fixes and update NEWS