Contributing to plotly.js

Opening issues

Search for existing and closed issues. If your problem or idea is not addressed yet, please open a new issue.

Bug reports must be accompanied with a reproducible example. We recommend using codepen, jsfiddle or jsbin to share your example.

Note that GitHub issues are reserved for bug reports and feature requests only. Implementation questions should be asked on community.plot.ly (tagged plotly-js) or on Stack Overflow (tagged plotly).

Comments on GitHub issues or pull requests should add content to the discussions. Approbation comments such as +1 or I would like this feature to be implemented as well will be deleted by the maintainers. Please use GitHub reactions instead.

Making pull requests

Developers are strongly encouraged to first make a PR to their own plotly.js fork and ask one of the maintainers to review the modifications there. Once the pull request is deemed satisfactory, the developer will be asked to make a pull request to the main plotly.js repo and may be asked to squash some commits before doing so.

Developers should git rebase their local branch off the latest master before opening a pull request.

Note that it is forbidden to force push (i.e. git push -f) to remote branches associated with opened pull requests. Force pushes make it hard for maintainers to keep track of updates. Therefore, if required, please git merge master into your PR branch instead of git rebase master.

GitHub labels

We use the following labels to track issues and PRs:

Label	Purpose
`type: bug`	bug report confirmed by a plotly team member
`type: feature`	planned feature additions
`type: performance`	performance related tasks
`type: maintenace`	source code cleanup resulting in no enhancement for users
`type: community`	issue left open for community input and pull requests
`type: duplicate`	self-explanatory
`type: wontfix`	self-explanatory
`status: discussion needed`	Issue or PR that required discussion among maintaners before moving forward
`status: in progress`	PRs that required some intial feedback but not ready to merge
`status: reviewable`	PRs that are completed from the author's perspective
`status: on hold`	PRs that are put on hold

Development

Perequisites

git
node.js. We recommend using node.js 4.2.x (LTS). Upgrading and managing node versions can be easily done using nvm or its Windows alternatives.

Step 1: Clone the plotly.js repo and install its dependencies

git clone https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js.git
cd plotly.js
npm install

Step 2: Start the test dashboard

npm start

This command bundles up the source files with source maps using browserify, starts a watchify file watcher (making the your dev plotly.js bundle update every time a source file is saved) and opens up a tab in your browser.

Step 3: Open up the console and start developing

A typical workflow is to make some modifications to the source, update the test dashboard, inspect and debug the changes, then repeat. The test dashboard comes bundled with some useful tools while developing - all bundled under the Tabs object:

Method/Property	Description
`Tabs.fresh([id])`	Creates a fresh graph div and returns it (default id of `graph`).
`Tabs.getGraph([id])`	Returns the default or specified graph div.
`Tabs.plotMock(mock, [id])`	Plots the specified mock (`.json` extension is not required).
`Tabs.snapshot([id])`	Creates a png snapshot of the plot and places it below.
`Tabs.reload()`	Reloads the plotly.js script and will execute `Tabs.onReload` once completed.
`Tabs.onReload()`	By default, set to `noop` but you may set `Tabs.onReload` to any function you wish. This is useful for replotting a mock or test every time you reload the plotly.js script.
`Tabs.purge()`	Destroys all plots.

View the source for more info.

Three additional helpers exist that are refreshed every second:

gd - this is the default plot div
fullData - shortcut to gd._fullData
fullLayout - shortcut to gd._fullLayout

There is also a search bar in the top right of the dashboard. This fuzzy-searches image mocks based on their file name and trace type.

Other npm scripts

npm run preprocess: pre-processes the css and svg source file in js. This script must be run manually when updating the css and svg source files.
npm run watch: starts a watchify file watcher just like the test dashboard but without booting up a server.

Testing

Both jasmine and image tests are run on CircleCI on every push to this repo.

Jasmine tests are run in a browser using karma. To run them locally:

npm run test-jasmine

Image pixel comparison tests are run in a docker container. For more information on how to run them locally, please refer to image test README.

Running the test locally outputs the generated png images in build/test_images/ and the png diffs in build/test_images_diff/ (two git-ignored directories).

To view the image pixel comparison test results, run

npm run start-image_viewer

which shows the baseline image, the generated image, the diff and the json mocks of test cases that failed.

To view the results of a run on CircleCI, download the build/test_images/ and build/test_images_diff/ artifacts into your local repo and then run npm run start-image_viewer.

Repo organization

Distributed files are in dist/
CommonJS require-able modules are in lib/
Sources files are in src/, including the index
Build and repo management scripts are in tasks/
All tasks can be run using npm run-script
Tests are test/, they are partitioned into image and jasmine tests
Test dashboard and image viewer code is in devtools/
Non-distributed, built files are in build/ (most files in here are git-ignored, the css and font built files are exceptions)

Coding style

Check if ok, with npm run lint

See eslintrc and the eslint list of rules for more details.
Rules listed in the eslintrc file with the ignore flag 0 are the recommended rules for new code added.

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