How to specify marker symbol/color based on value?

Is there a way to specify to the plot_ly() function which values should appear as what symbol/color in a plot? For example, the mtcars dataset, display mtcars$mpg < 18 as black x’s, mtcars$mpg > 19 && mtcars$mpg <25 as orange squares, and mtcars$mpg > 26 as red circles? I feel like this is a pretty general problem and have not been able to find any help anywhere.

Hey @kyleweise

There are lots of ways you could do this, but following what you have written:

p <- plot_ly() %>%
  add_markers(x = which(mtcars$mpg < 18), y = mtcars$mpg[mtcars$mpg < 18], marker = list(color = 'black', symbol = 'cross')) %>%
  add_markers(x = which(mtcars$mpg > 19 & mtcars$mpg < 25), y = mtcars$mpg[mtcars$mpg > 19 & mtcars$mpg <25], marker = list(color = 'orange', symbol = 'square')) %>%
  add_markers(x = which(mtcars$mpg > 26), y = mtcars$mpg[mtcars$mpg > 26], marker = list(color = 'red', symbol = 'circle'))
1 Like

This is perfect! Sorry for the late response. But this is exactly what I needed.

Hey @bcd
For my own dataset, each of these conditions might not always be met (i.e. in mtcars, there might not be any rows where mpg is between 19 and 25). So when I run this code for my own dataset, I get an error saying:

“Error: Must supply x and y attributes”

Because the middle add_markers()'s x and y have no value. Is there a way around this? So that it wouldn’t plot anything, and toggling the label in the legend won’t do anything to the plot.