running from within R produces no PNG

[mschilli87]

I am trying to render a 3D plotly plot I made in R statically from different angles as PNG files.
I managed to dump the plotly object to a JSON file but running

system("orca graph /tmp/test.json -o /tmp/model.png")

does not produce the PNG file.
It runs for ~3sec and finishes but all it leaves behind is an empty /tmp/orca-build directory.

Surprinsingly, running

orca graph /tmp/test.json -o /tmp/model.png

(copy/paste-ed from R, just to be sure) from shell works produces the correct PNG file.

Any clues what is going on?
I want to generate many PNGs to use them as frames for a video, so being able to do this from an R loop would be much more convenient than looping in R to create many JSONs and looping again in shell to convert them all.

[etpinard]

Does

library(plotly)

p <- plot_ly(x = 1:10, y = 1:10, color = 1:10)
b <- plotly_build(p)$x[c("data", "layout")]
json <- plotly:::to_JSON(b)

cmd <- sprintf("orca graph '%s' -o r-export-test.png", json)
system(cmd)

as in our quick start instructions work for you though?

[mschilli87]

@etpinard: Yes it does, but this is a much more basic plot and orca finishes basically immediately.
I guess this only occurs when some more heavy lifting is involved.
My JSON is > 3 MB, but it worked 10/10 time from the shell and 0/10 times via system from R.

[etpinard]

Have you tried the new orca function in R

https://github.com/plotly/orca/pull/94/files

[mschilli87]

It throws

Error: No mapbox access token found. Obtain a token here
https://www.mapbox.com/help/create-api-access-token/
Once you have a token, assign it to an environment variable 
named 'MAPBOX_TOKEN', for example,
Sys.setenv('MAPBOX_TOKEN' = 'secret token')

instead of using my local installation of orca

[etpinard]

Are you trying to export a scattermapbox graph? If so, then yes you'll need to add the access token to your shell environment.

Now, maybe the R api wants you to have MAPBOX_TOKEN set no matter what graph you're trying to export. I don't know., but that would be a question for https://github.com/ropensci/plotly

[mschilli87]

Are you trying to export a scattermapbox graph? If so, then yes you'll need to add the access token to your shell environment.

I honestly don't even know what a scattermapbox graph is. So unless add_lines on a 3D plot somehow does this in the background, the answer is no. 😄

Now, maybe the R api wants you to have MAPBOX_TOKEN set no matter what graph you're trying to export. I don't know., but that would be a question for https://github.com/ropensci/plotly

But shouldn't command line orca run fine when called from within R just like when called from shell? Or is this something I'd have to take up to the base-R devs? 😉

[mschilli87]

This is very weird: Now, I am also not able to get the PNG when running

orca graph /tmp/test.json -o /tmp/model.png

but

cd /tmp && orca graph test.json -o model.png && cd -

works.

So I went ahead and tried

system("cd /tmp && orca graph test.json -o model.png")

and I got the PNG!

---

Should I close this issue and open a new one or just change this issues title to further investigate?

[etpinard]

Should I close this issue and open a new one or just change this issues title to further investigate?

This appears like a duplicate of #101

[mschilli87]

I can confirm that I indeed had a ~/model.png from the 'unsuccessful' runs. 😉