Different results with plotly_click vs plotly_selected

[destradafilm]

I'm working on a SCATTERPLOT and adding some user interactions.

'plotly_click' is only called when a user clicks a point

'plotly_selected' is also called when a user clicks either a blank area of the plot OR when a user clicks a point (but returns an empty data obj)

I feel like it makes more sense to call 'plotly_click' no matter where you click on the chart, return data if a point is clicked, but return empty data if no points are clicked.

I'm asking for this feature for some interactions on my scatterplot.

For example:
If a user clicks a point, color the point 'red'

• easy, since I can use the data.points[0] to find which marker to color

If a user clicks an empty part of the chart, reset the 'selected' points and color it back to original color.

• I can use 'if data == undefined' then color all points back to original color', but problem is data == undefined if I click a point, or click an empty place in chart...'plotly_click' is never called here

[etpinard]

@destradafilm thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

There's definitively room for improvement in our event namespace. That said, we're currently freezing the event behavior as is in v1 so I pasted your comment in the v2 event issue #145 (comment).

To workaround this problem in the meantime, I'd recommend adding a (plain) click handler to the graph div:

var gd = document.getElementById('graph')

Plotly.plot(gd, /* */)

// plotly.click stuff triggered within hover distance of pts
gd.on('plotly_click', () => {}) 

// plain click triggered on any click on graph div
gd.addEventListeners('click', () => {})

I'd also recommend digging up old posts on https://community.plot.ly/ for more examples.