R geom_tile width and height are ignored in ggplotly

Question

The height and width parameters of geom_tile are not being taken into account when converted to ggplotly, as shown in the example below. Is there a work around? Please note that my dataset is in fact very large (+80k data points), so I would favor an efficient solution, if there is one.

library(plotly)

X <- data.frame(x = c(1, 2, 1, 2), y = c(1, 1, 2, 2), z = 1:4)
gg <- ggplot(X, aes(x, y)) + geom_tile(aes(fill = z), width = .5, height = .5)

gg
ggplotly(gg)

Answer 1

This seems to be a bug in ggplotly. The easiest thing would be to convert your geom_tile to geom_rect. I don't think this will be any less efficient than geom_tile, since you are just replicating what geom_tile does internally.

library(plotly)

X <- data.frame(x = c(1, 2, 1, 2), y = c(1, 1, 2, 2), z = 1:4)

width <- .5
height <- .5

gg <- ggplot(X, aes(x, y)) + 
  geom_rect(aes(xmin = x - width/2, xmax = x + width/2, 
                ymin = y - height/2, ymax = y + height/2, fill = z))

ggplotly(gg)