Timezone parsing issue with plotly.py JSON serialization

Hello,

This is a code snippet that shows how even when explicitly defining timezones, and stripping out any possible confusion, plot.ly will refuse to display the X axis in the local timezone, instead converting and showing UTC only.

My working code is slightly different, but the incorrect end behavior is the same in this case as well when originating from strings and simple DataFrames

inspecting the fig immediately before being called to draw graph indeed shows the correct US/Eastern timezone, which happens as expected when the x value of the trace is defined.

import plotly.plotly as py
from plotly.graph_objs import *
import pandas as pd
import sys, datetime
from datetime import timedelta

incoming = {
    7887966:    [0.601345, 152.21, 253.12, '2015-04-04 19:31:30'],
    7887967:    [0.075392, 19.08, 253.12, '2015-04-04 19:31:34'],
    7887968:    [0.385279, 97.39, 252.77, '2015-04-04 19:32:13'],
    7887969:    [0.330650, 83.69, 253.12, '2015-04-04 19:32:14'],
    7887970:    [0.110700, 28.02, 253.13, '2015-04-04 19:32:14']}

df = pd.DataFrame.from_dict(incoming, orient='index')
df.columns = ['a','b','y','time']
df['time'] = pd.to_datetime(df['time'])
df = df.set_index('time')

trace = Box(
    x=df.index.tz_localize('UTC').tz_convert('US/Eastern'),
    y=df['y'].values,
    name='timezone issues',
    fillcolor='#a5b404',
    opacity=0.66,
    marker=Marker(
        color='#a5b404'
    )
)

data = Data([trace])

axis_style = dict(
    zeroline=True,
    zerolinecolor='#444',
    zerolinewidth=1,
    gridcolor='#eee',
    autotick=True,
    showline=False
)

layout = Layout(
    title='Timezone offset issue',
    plot_bgcolor='#fff',
    hovermode='closest',
    autosize=True,
    height=610,
    width=1296,
    showlegend=False,
    xaxis=XAxis(
        axis_style,
        autorange=True,
        rangemode='normal',
        tickangle='auto',
        title='Time (note the UTC, when should be US Eastern)',
    ),
    yaxis=YAxis(
        axis_style,
        title='Y axis (no issues here)'
    )
)
fig = Figure(data=data, layout=layout)
py.plot(fig, filename='timezone-issues', world_readable=False)

[KieranWynn]

I would also like to give plotly tz-aware datetimes and have them shown in the provided timezone. Maybe have an API-configurable option to select the viewing timezone?

[jonmmease]

Hi all, I haven’t really dug into this yet but it’s definitely important and something that we plan to take care of as a part of version 4. Thanks for helping each other out with workarounds in the meantime!