title: Introduction author: Daniel Jones order: 1 ...
Gadfly is a system for plotting and visualization based largely on Hadley Wickhams's ggplot2 for R, and Leland Wilkinson's book The Grammar of Graphics.
From the Julia REPL a reasonably up to date version can be installed with
Pkg.add("Gadfly")
This will likely result in half a dozen or so other packages also being installed.
Gadfly is then loaded with.
using Gadfly
Gadfly.set_default_plot_size(14cm, 8cm)
Gadfly works best with the C libraries cairo, pango, and fontconfig installed.
The PNG, PS, and PDF backends require cairo, but without it the SVG backends
(SVG and SVGJS) are still available.
Complex layouts involving text are also somewhat more accurate when pango and fontconfig are available.
Julia's Cairo bindings can be installed with
Pkg.add("Cairo")
Most interaction with Gadfly is through the plot function. Plots are described
by binding data to aesthetics, and specifying a number of plot elements
including scales, coordinates, guides, and geometries.
Aesthetics are a set of special named variables that are mapped to plot
geometry. How this mapping occurs is defined by the plot elements.
This "grammar of graphics" approach tries to avoid arcane incantations and special cases, instead approaching the problem as if one were drawing a wiring diagram: data is connected to aesthetics, which act as input leads, and elements, each self-contained with well-defined inputs and outputs, are connected and combined to produce the desired result.
If no plot elements are defined, point geometry is added by default. The point
geometry takes as input the x and y aesthetics. So all that's needed to draw
a scatterplot is to bind x and y.
srand(12345)
# E.g.
plot(x=rand(10), y=rand(10))Multiple elements can use the same aesthetics to produce different output. Here the point and line geometries act on the same data and their results are layered.
# E.g.
plot(x=rand(10), y=rand(10), Geom.point, Geom.line)More complex plots can be produced by combining elements.
# E.g.
plot(x=1:10, y=2.^rand(10),
Scale.y_sqrt, Geom.point, Geom.smooth,
Guide.xlabel("Stimulus"), Guide.ylabel("Response"), Guide.title("Dog Training"))To generate an image file from a plot, use the draw function. Gadfly supports
a number of drawing backends. Each is used similarly.
# define a plot
myplot = plot(..)
# draw on every available backend
draw(SVG("myplot.svg", 4inch, 3inch), myplot)
draw(SVGJS("myplot.svg", 4inch, 3inch), myplot)
draw(PNG("myplot.png", 4inch, 3inch), myplot)
draw(PDF("myplot.pdf", 4inch, 3inch), myplot)
draw(PS("myplot.ps", 4inch, 3inch), myplot)
If used from IJulia, the output of
plot will be shown automatically.
The DataFrames package provides a powerful means of representing and manipulating tabular data. They can be used directly in Gadfly to make more complex plots simpler and easier to generate.
In this form of plot, a data frame is passed to as the first argument, and
columns of the data frame are bound to aesthetics by name or index.
# Signature for the plot applied to a data frames.
plot(data::AbstractDataFrame, elements::Element...; mapping...)
The RDatasets package collects
example data sets from R packages. We'll use that here to generate some example
plots on realistic data sets. An example data set is loaded into a data frame
usinge the data function.
using RDatasets# E.g.
plot(dataset("datasets", "iris"), x="SepalLength", y="SepalWidth", Geom.point)# E.g.
plot(dataset("car", "SLID"), x="Wages", color="Language", Geom.histogram)Along with less typing, using data frames to generate plots allows the axis and guide labels to be set automatically.
Along with the standard plot function, Gadfly has some special forms to make plotting functions and expressions more convenient.
plot(f::Function, a, b, elements::Element...)
plot(fs::Array, a, b, elements::Element...)
Some special forms of plot exist for quickly generating 2d plots of functions.
# E.g.
plot([sin, cos], 0, 25)Gadfly can draw multiple layers to the same plot:
plot(layer(x=rand(10), y=rand(10), Geom.point),
layer(x=rand(10), y=rand(10), Geom.line))
Or if your data is in a DataFrame:
plot(my_data, layer(x="some_column1", y="some_column2", Geom.point),
layer(x="some_column3", y="some_column4", Geom.line))
You can also pass different data frames to each layers:
layer(another_dataframe, x="col1", y="col2", Geom.point)
Plots can also be stacked horizontally with hstack or vertically with vstack. This allows more customization in regards to tick marks, axis labeling, and other plot details than is available with subplot_grid.
p1 = plot(x=[1,2,3], y=[4,5,6])
p2 = plot(x=[1,2,3], y=[6,7,8])
draw(PDF("data.pdf", 6inch, 6inch) vstack(p1,p2))
Gadfly plots can be rendered to number of formats. Without cairo, or any
non-julia libraries, it can produce SVG. Installing cairo gives you access to
the PNG, PDF, and PS backends. Rendering to a backend works the same for
any of these.
p = plot(x=[1,2,3], y=[4,5,6])
draw(PNG("myplot.png", 12cm, 6cm), p)
The SVGJS backend writes SVG with embedded javascript. There are a couple
subtlties with using the output from this backend.
Drawing to the backend works like any other.
draw(SVGJS("mammals.js.svg", 6inch, 6inch), p)
If included with an <img> tag, it will display as a static SVG image.
<img src="mammals.js.svg"/>For the interactive javascript features to be enables, the output either needs to be inluded inline in the HTML page, or include with an object tag, like.
<object data="mammals.js.svg" type="image/svg+xml"></object>A div element must be placed, and the draw function defined in mammals.js
must be passed the id of this element, so it knows where in the document to
place the plot.
The IJulia project adds Julia support to IPython. This includes a browser based notebook that can inline graphics and plots. Gadfly works out of the box with IJulia, with or without drawing explicity to a backend.
Without a specific call to draw (i.e. just calling plot), the D3 backend is
used with a default plot size. The default plot size can be changed with
set_default_plot_size.
# E.g.
set_default_plot_size(12cm, 8cm)
This is a new and fairly complex piece of software. Filing an issue to report a bug, counterintuitive behavior, or even to request a feature is extremely valuable in helping me prioritize what to work on, so don't hestitate.