Hands-on_Exercise3

Author

CHEN HO TUNG

Published

January 25, 2026

Modified

January 25, 2026

3.2 Getting Started

pacman::p_load(ggiraph, plotly, 
               patchwork, DT, tidyverse) 

3.3 Importing Data

exam_data <- read_csv("data/Exam_data.csv")

3.4 Interactive Data Visualisation - ggiraph methods

  • Tooltip: a column of data-sets that contain tooltips to be displayed when the mouse is over elements.

  • Onclick: a column of data-sets that contain a JavaScript function to be executed when elements are clicked.

  • Data_id: a column of data-sets that contain an id to be associated with elements.

3.4.1 Tooltip effect with tooltip aesthetic

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(
    aes(tooltip = ID),
    stackgroups = TRUE, 
    binwidth = 1, 
    method = "histodot") +
  scale_y_continuous(NULL, 
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(
  ggobj = p,
  width_svg = 6,
  height_svg = 6*0.618
)

3.5 Interactivity

By hovering the mouse pointer on an data point of interest, the student’s ID will be displayed.

girafe(
  ggobj = p,
  width_svg = 6,
  height_svg = 6*0.618
)

3.5.1 Displaying multiple information on tooltip

The content of the tooltip can be customised by including a list object as shown in the code chunk below.

exam_data$tooltip <- c(paste0(     
  "Name = ", exam_data$ID,         
  "\n Class = ", exam_data$CLASS)) 

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(
    aes(tooltip = exam_data$tooltip), 
    stackgroups = TRUE,
    binwidth = 1,
    method = "histodot") +
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(
  ggobj = p,
  width_svg = 8,
  height_svg = 8*0.618
)

3.6 Interactivity

By hovering the mouse pointer on an data point of interest, the student’s ID and Class will be displayed.

girafe(
  ggobj = p,
  width_svg = 8,
  height_svg = 8*0.618
)

3.6.1 Customising Tooltip style

Code chunk below uses opts_tooltip() of ggiraph to customize tooltip rendering by add css declarations.

tooltip_css <- "background-color:white; #<<
font-style:bold; color:black;" #<<

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(tooltip = ID),                   
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +               
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(                                  
  ggobj = p,                             
  width_svg = 6,                         
  height_svg = 6*0.618,
  options = list(    #<<
    opts_tooltip(    #<<
      css = tooltip_css)) #<<
)                            

3.6.2 Displaying statistics on tooltip

Code chunk below shows an advanced way to customise tooltip. In this example, a function is used to compute 90% confident interval of the mean. The derived statistics are then displayed in the tooltip.

tooltip <- function(y, ymax, accuracy = .01) {
  mean <- scales::number(y, accuracy = accuracy)
  sem <- scales::number(ymax - y, accuracy = accuracy)
  paste("Mean maths scores:", mean, "+/-", sem)
}

gg_point <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
                   aes(x = RACE),
) +
  stat_summary(aes(y = MATHS, 
                   tooltip = after_stat(  
                     tooltip(y, ymax))),  
    fun.data = "mean_se", 
    geom = GeomInteractiveCol,  
    fill = "light blue"
  ) +
  stat_summary(aes(y = MATHS),
    fun.data = mean_se,
    geom = "errorbar", width = 0.2, size = 0.2
  )

girafe(ggobj = gg_point,
       width_svg = 8,
       height_svg = 8*0.618)

3.6.3 Hover effect with data_id aesthetic

Code chunk below shows the second interactive feature of ggiraph, namely data_id.

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(           
    aes(data_id = CLASS),             
    stackgroups = TRUE,               
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +               
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(                                  
  ggobj = p,                             
  width_svg = 6,                         
  height_svg = 6*0.618                      
)                                        

3.6.4 Styling hover effect

In the code chunk below, css codes are used to change the highlighting effect.

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(data_id = CLASS),              
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +               
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(                                  
  ggobj = p,                             
  width_svg = 6,                         
  height_svg = 6*0.618,
  options = list(                        
    opts_hover(css = "fill: #202020;"),  
    opts_hover_inv(css = "opacity:0.2;") 
  )                                        
)                                        

3.6.5 Combining tooltip and hover effect

There are time that we want to combine tooltip and hover effect on the interactive statistical graph as shown in the code chunk below.

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(tooltip = CLASS, 
        data_id = CLASS),              
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +               
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(                                  
  ggobj = p,                             
  width_svg = 6,                         
  height_svg = 6*0.618,
  options = list(                        
    opts_hover(css = "fill: #202020;"),  
    opts_hover_inv(css = "opacity:0.2;") 
  )                                        
)                                        

3.6.6 Click effect with onclick

onclick argument of ggiraph provides hotlink interactivity on the web.

The code chunk below shown an example of onclick.

exam_data$onclick <- sprintf("window.open(\"%s%s\")",
"https://www.moe.gov.sg/schoolfinder?journey=Primary%20school",
as.character(exam_data$ID))

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(onclick = onclick),              
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +               
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(                                  
  ggobj = p,                             
  width_svg = 6,                         
  height_svg = 6*0.618)                                        

3.6.6 Click effect with onclick

onclick argument of ggiraph provides hotlink interactivity on the web.

The code chunk below shown an example of onclick.

exam_data$onclick <- sprintf("window.open(\"%s%s\")",
"https://www.moe.gov.sg/schoolfinder?journey=Primary%20school",
as.character(exam_data$ID))

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(onclick = onclick),              
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +               
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)
girafe(                                  
  ggobj = p,                             
  width_svg = 6,                         
  height_svg = 6*0.618)                                        

3.6.7 Coordinated Multiple Views with ggiraph

Coordinated multiple views methods has been implemented in the data visualisation below.

Notice that when a data point of one of the dotplot is selected, the corresponding data point ID on the second data visualisation will be highlighted too.

In order to build a coordinated multiple views as shown in the example above, the following programming strategy will be used:

  1. Appropriate interactive functions of ggiraph will be used to create the multiple views.

  2. patchwork function of patchwork package will be used inside girafe function to create the interactive coordinated multiple views.

p1 <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = MATHS)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(data_id = ID),              
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") +  
  coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0,100)) + 
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)

p2 <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
       aes(x = ENGLISH)) +
  geom_dotplot_interactive(              
    aes(data_id = ID),              
    stackgroups = TRUE,                  
    binwidth = 1,                        
    method = "histodot") + 
  coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0,100)) + 
  scale_y_continuous(NULL,               
                     breaks = NULL)

girafe(code = print(p1 + p2), 
       width_svg = 6,
       height_svg = 3,
       options = list(
         opts_hover(css = "fill: #202020;"),
         opts_hover_inv(css = "opacity:0.2;")
         )
       ) 

3.7 Interactive Data Visualisation - plotly methods!

Plotly’s R graphing library create interactive web graphics from ggplot2 graphs and/or a custom interface to the (MIT-licensed) JavaScript library plotly.js inspired by the grammar of graphics. Different from other plotly platform, plot.R is free and open source.

There are two ways to create interactive graph by using plotly, they are:

  • by using plot_ly(), and

  • by using ggplotly()

3.7.1 Creating an interactive scatter plot: plot_ly() method

The tabset below shows an example a basic interactive plot created by using plot_ly().

plot_ly(data = exam_data, 
             x = ~MATHS, 
             y = ~ENGLISH)
plot_ly(data = exam_data, 
        x = ~ENGLISH, 
        y = ~MATHS, 
        color = ~RACE)

3.7.3 Creating an interactive scatter plot: ggplotly() method

The code chunk below plots an interactive scatter plot by using ggplotly().

p <- ggplot(data=exam_data, 
            aes(x = MATHS,
                y = ENGLISH)) +
  geom_point(size=1) +
  coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0,100),
                  ylim=c(0,100))
ggplotly(p)

3.7.4 Coordinated Multiple Views with plotly

The creation of a coordinated linked plot by using plotly involves three steps:

  • highlight_key() of plotly package is used as shared data.

  • two scatterplots will be created by using ggplot2 functions.

  • lastly, subplot() of plotly package is used to place them next to each other side-by-side.

d <- highlight_key(exam_data)
p1 <- ggplot(data=d, 
            aes(x = MATHS,
                y = ENGLISH)) +
  geom_point(size=1) +
  coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0,100),
                  ylim=c(0,100))

p2 <- ggplot(data=d, 
            aes(x = MATHS,
                y = SCIENCE)) +
  geom_point(size=1) +
  coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0,100),
                  ylim=c(0,100))
subplot(ggplotly(p1),
        ggplotly(p2))

Thing to learn from the code chunk:

3.8 Interactive Data Visualisation - crosstalk methods!

Crosstalk is an add-on to the htmlwidgets package. It extends htmlwidgets with a set of classes, functions, and conventions for implementing cross-widget interactions (currently, linked brushing and filtering).

3.8.1 Interactive Data Table: DT package

  • A wrapper of the JavaScript Library DataTables

  • Data objects in R can be rendered as HTML tables using the JavaScript library ‘DataTables’ (typically via R Markdown or Shiny).

DT::datatable(exam_data, class= "compact")

3.8.2 Linked brushing: crosstalk method

d <- highlight_key(exam_data) 
p <- ggplot(d, 
            aes(ENGLISH, 
                MATHS)) + 
  geom_point(size=1) +
  coord_cartesian(xlim=c(0,100),
                  ylim=c(0,100))

gg <- highlight(ggplotly(p),        
                "plotly_selected")  

crosstalk::bscols(gg,               
                  DT::datatable(d), 
                  widths = 5)        

Things to learn from the code chunk:

  • highlight() is a function of plotly package. It sets a variety of options for brushing (i.e., highlighting) multiple plots. These options are primarily designed for linking multiple plotly graphs, and may not behave as expected when linking plotly to another htmlwidget package via crosstalk. In some cases, other htmlwidgets will respect these options, such as persistent selection in leaflet.

  • bscols() is a helper function of crosstalk package. It makes it easy to put HTML elements side by side. It can be called directly from the console but is especially designed to work in an R Markdown document. Warning: This will bring in all of Bootstrap!.

3.9 Reference

3.9.1 ggiraph

This link provides online version of the reference guide and several useful articles. Use this link to download the pdf version of the reference guide.

3.9.2 plotly for R