px animations does not show correctly colors if all colors are not in the first frame

For example

import pandas as pd
import plotly.express as px
dataVals = {
    'Lat': [39.783730, 7, 39.783730, 39.783730, 20, -4.03, 39.783730, 36.82, 39.783730],
    'Lon': [-100.445882, 66, -100.445882, -100.445882, 70, 5.33, -100.445882, -1.29, -100.445882],
    'Value': [40, 12, 22, 3, 60, 23, 30, 100, 200],
    'Year': ['1985', '1990', '1990', '1990', '1990', '1990', '2000', '2000', '2000'],
    'Continent Color': ["a", "b", "a", "a", "b", "c", "b", "d", "a"]
    }
data = pd.DataFrame(dataVals)

fig = px.scatter_geo(data, lat="Lat", lon="Lon", size="Value", color="Continent Color",
                     animation_frame="Year", animation_group="Continent Color",
                     projection="natural earth", size_max=200)

fig.show()

(all points are displayed with the color of continent “a”). Reported by https://community.plot.ly/t/scatter-geo-only-shows-values-with-a-certain-color-if-i-have-multiple-years-as-the-same-year/35976. Other functions such as px.scatter have the same problem.

If all colors are used for the first frame, the problem disappears.

[hlgirard]

Are there any plans to improve this feature to make it work as expected? I use animation_frame a lot to group data that belongs together in conjunction with color and would love to be able to leverage the expected behavior.

[fingerpartyy]

hello @emmanuelle . I found a workaround for this, because i am also having trouble with animation on px. I didn’t modified the df, but i changed the approach of the color variable from categorical to numeric:

• creating a new column, then
• including color_continuous_scale and range_color variables

Here is the modified code. Hopefully it will help others:

def dummy_scatter():
    dataVals = {
        'Lat': [39.783730, 7, 39.783730, 39.783730, 20, -4.03, 39.783730, 36.82, 39.783730],
        'Lon': [-100.445882, 66, -100.445882, -100.445882, 70, 5.33, -100.445882, -1.29, -100.445882],
        'Value': [40, 12, 22, 3, 60, 23, 30, 100, 200],
        'Year': ['1985', '1990', '1990', '1990', '1990', '1990', '2000', '2000', '2000'],
        'Continent Color': ["a", "b", "a", "a", "b", "c", "b", "d", "a"]
        }
    data = pd.DataFrame(dataVals)
    data['ContinentColorNumber']=data['Continent Color']
    colordictContinent={'a':1,'b':2,'c':3,'d':4}
    data.ContinentColorNumber.replace(colordictContinent,inplace=True)
    
    fig = px.scatter_geo(data, 
                         lat="Lat", lon="Lon", 
                         size="Value", 
                         color="ContinentColorNumber",
                         color_continuous_scale='thermal',
                         range_color=(data.ContinentColorNumber.min(),data.ContinentColorNumber.max()),
                         projection="natural earth", 
                         animation_frame="Year",
                         size_max=20)
    
    return fig

dummy_scatter()