Remove auxiliary hover text in plotly R package

Question

I have made a plot in plotly with the following code:

Geocode <- c("Onondaga County", "Oswego County", "Cayuga County")
nclients <- c(2237,540,502)
n_txt <- c("2237","540","502")

df <- data.frame(Geocode,nclients,n_txt)

df %>% plot_ly() %>% 
  add_trace(x = ~Geocode,
            y=~nclients,
            color=~Geocode,
            text=~n_txt,
            textposition="outside",
            textfont=list(color='#000000'),
            type='bar', 
            hovertemplate = "%{y} clients were %{x} ",
            marker = list(line=list(color='rgb(8,48,107)',width=1.5))) %>% 
  layout(title="Whole year count by county",
         barmode='group',
         xaxis = list(title=""),
         yaxis = list(title=""))

There are 2 things I want to change here:

1. I want to get rid of the outside label in the plot that prints the value of the x variable. In this case, it shows the name of the county in colored text outside of the box. I circled the label I'm trying to get rid of here. I want the hovertext just to show the text that I specified.

2. I want the hovertext to display the value of the n_txt variable instead of the nclients variable. This is not important for this particular graph, but in similar graphs if the count is less than 5 people I want it to say "<5" instead of the actual number of people. The n_txt variable is created by testing the value of nclients and if it is less than 5, it replaces it with "<5". I tried using %{text} in the hovertemplate command instead of %{y} but that didn't work. Is there a way to do this in plotly?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Answer 1

hi a fast solution would be to work it with the text variable directly that solves two issues:

library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(plotly)

df <- data.frame(Geocode = c("Onondaga County", "Oswego County", "Cayuga County"),
                 nclients = c(2237,540,502),
                 n_txt = c("aaa","ddd","ccc"))


df %>% plot_ly() %>% 
  add_trace(x =~Geocode,
            y=~nclients,
            color=~Geocode,
            textposition="none", # change this to get fixed labels on the bars ie. top
            textfont=list(color='#000000'),
            type='bar', 
            text = ~list(paste('n_txt:', n_txt,
                               '<br>Geocode:',Geocode,
                               '<br>nclients',nclients)),
            hoverinfo = 'text',
            marker = list(line=list(color='rgb(8,48,107)',width=1.5))) %>% 
  layout(title="Whole year count by county",
         barmode='group',
         xaxis = list(title=""),
         yaxis = list(title=""))

If you opt for texposition above the whole text gets on top of the bar though. Inside the hover template the secondary label can be removed - about the text label I am not sure how to solve it but we can put the text on top of the bars (or omit it ie.):

df %>% 
  plot_ly() %>% 
  add_trace(x = ~Geocode,
            y=~nclients,
            color=~Geocode,
            text=~n_txt,
            textfont=list(color='#000000'),
            type='bar', 
            textposition="outside",
            hovertemplate = paste("%{y} clients were",
                                  "%{x}",
                                  "<extra></extra>"), # this removes the secondary label
            marker = list(line=list(color='rgb(8,48,107)',width=1.5))) %>% 
  layout(title="Whole year count by county",
         barmode='group',
         xaxis = list(title=""),
         yaxis = list(title=""))

I tried something with this info (section "Advanced Hovertemplate" but it somehow does not work reliably (no idea why): https://plotly.com/r/hover-text-and-formatting/