Search code examples
pythonplotlytimeline

How to get plotly.express.timeline overlapped bars to be visible

I'd like to know if anyone has a solution to overlapping timeline bars?

import plotly.express as px
import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame([
    dict(Task="Job A", Start='2009-01-01', Finish='2009-02-28', Resource="Alex"),
    dict(Task="Job B", Start='2009-02-25', Finish='2009-04-15', Resource="Alex"),
    dict(Task="Job C", Start='2009-02-23', Finish='2009-05-23', Resource="Max"),
    dict(Task="Job D", Start='2009-02-20', Finish='2009-05-30', Resource="Max")
])

fig = px.timeline(df, x_start="Start", x_end="Finish", y="Resource", color="Resource")
fig.show()

enter image description here

And in the image it's very difficult to see:

  • Where Job A ends/Job B starts
  • Job D is not visible at all

Any suggestions?

Solution

  • I often find that assigning different width to some of the categories helps make the whole thing easier to read. So in your case I would include a column in your df where this is specified, and then edit the figure using:

    for i, d in enumerate(fig.data):
    d.width = df[df['Task']==d.name]['width']

    Plot:

    enter image description here

    Complete code with edited data:

    import plotly.express as px
import pandas as pd

resource = ['Alex', 'Max']
df = pd.DataFrame([
    dict(Task="Job A", Start='2009-01-01', Finish='2009-02-28', Resource="Alex", width = 0.5),
    dict(Task="Job B", Start='2009-02-25', Finish='2009-04-15', Resource="Alex", width = 0.2),
    dict(Task="Job C", Start='2009-02-23', Finish='2009-05-23', Resource="Max", width = 0.5),
    dict(Task="Job D", Start='2009-02-20', Finish='2009-05-30', Resource="Max", width = 0.2)
])

fig = px.timeline(df, x_start="Start", x_end="Finish", y="Resource", color="Task")

for i, d in enumerate(fig.data):
    d.width = df[df['Task']==d.name]['width']
fig.show()