a version of .newPlot that does the .update logic behind the scenes

In Dash, I’d like the Graph component to do smart restyle and relayout updates when I call newPlot or plot (or some new method). Dash users deal with figures and not diffs.

Programming this logic myself is a lot of work that other groups could benefit from if it was done centrally in plotly.js. I wrote a lot of the logic in the workspace and it took a while to work through all the kinks. Some of the edge cases included:

• calling newPlot instead of update at the start
• calling addTraces manually instead of update
• calling newPlot instead of update when switching between 2D, 3D, or ternary
• calling newPlot when switching to a financial chart type
• deleting cartesian axes when swithing to ternary or mapbox

Here is that code

This would form the basis of a plotly.js React component.

Dash users will benefit from this immediately with:

• Faster updates enabling their apps to refresh every 50ms and mimic live-streaming
• Mapbox updates with full map redraws

Ideally, this logic would work its way into a robust .animate method as well (.animate method that can handle any type of figure diff #1849)

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cc @rreusser @alexcjohnson @etpinard @cpsievert @monfera @jackparmer

[etpinard]

I’d vote for adding a new Plotly method (roll the 🥁 ) Plotly.react(gd, fig).

[monfera]

Arriving at the delta spec between two subsequent specs sounds similar to a DOM diffing algo. With Étienne’s Plotly.react it’d be black box to Dash / Python but internally, at least from some point onward, it’d be good to handle updates incrementally. The current Plotly.restyle calls occupy the middle ground, not granular enough for the fastest updates and not aggregate enough to allow full restatement of a plot.