Pass `figure` through `go.Figure` for validation?

[chriddyp]

If a user supplies their data with dictionaries and lists, they won't get validation. Perhaps we should pass the figure through plotly.graph_objs.Figure to give them validation.

This will require us to write some intermediate code between the auto-generated code and the serialization, which we haven't done before. It might be a good use case to try out these types of abstractions.

[rmarren1]

Will happen in plotly/dash#340

[rmarren1]

This worked pretty generally, but it seems there are some instances where go.Figure breaks on inputs that would have otherwise worked fine. One example (from the dash docs):

ComponentInitializationValidationError:
A Dash Component was initialized with invalid properties!

Dash tried to create a `Graph` component with the
following arguments, which caused a validation failure:

***************************************************************
{'figure': {'data': [{'name': 'SF',
                      'type': 'bar',
                      'x': [1, 2, 3],
                      'y': [4, 1, 2]},
                     {'name': u'Montr\xe9al',
                      'type': 'bar',
                      'x': [1, 2, 3],
                      'y': [2, 4, 5]}],
            'layout': {'title': 'Dash Data Visualization'}},
 'id': 'example-graph'}
***************************************************************

The expected schema for the `Graph` component is:

***************************************************************
{'animate': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'boolean'},
 'animation_options': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'},
 'className': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'string'},
 'clear_on_unhover': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'boolean'},
 'clickAnnotationData': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'},
 'clickData': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'},
 'config': {'allow_unknown': False,
            'nullable': False,
            'required': False,
            'schema': {'autosizable': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'displayModeBar': {'allowed': [True, False, 'hover'],
                                          'type': ('string', 'number')},
                       'displaylogo': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'doubleClick': {'allowed': [False,
                                                   'reset',
                                                   'autosize',
                                                   'reset+autosize'],
                                       'type': ('string', 'number')},
                       'editable': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'edits': {'allow_unknown': False,
                                 'nullable': False,
                                 'schema': {'annotationPosition': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'annotationTail': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'annotationText': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'axisTitleText': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'colorbarPosition': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'colorbarTitleText': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'legendPosition': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'legendText': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'shapePosition': {'type': 'boolean'},
                                            'titleText': {'type': 'boolean'}},
                                 'type': 'dict'},
                       'fillFrame': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'frameMargins': {'type': 'number'},
                       'linkText': {'type': 'string'},
                       'mapboxAccessToken': {},
                       'modeBarButtons': {},
                       'modeBarButtonsToAdd': {'type': 'list'},
                       'modeBarButtonsToRemove': {'type': 'list'},
                       'plotGlPixelRatio': {'type': 'number'},
                       'queueLength': {'type': 'number'},
                       'scrollZoom': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'sendData': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'showAxisDragHandles': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'showAxisRangeEntryBoxes': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'showLink': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'showTips': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'staticPlot': {'type': 'boolean'},
                       'topojsonURL': {'type': 'string'}},
            'type': 'dict'},
 'dashEvents': {'allowed': ['click',
                            'clickannotation',
                            'hover',
                            'selected',
                            'relayout',
                            'unhover'],
                'nullable': False,
                'required': False,
                'type': ('string', 'number')},
 'figure': {'nullable': False,
            'required': False,
            'type': 'dict',
            'validator': 'plotly_figure'},
 'fireEvent': {'nullable': False, 'required': False},
 'hoverData': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'},
 'id': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'string'},
 'relayoutData': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'},
 'selectedData': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'},
 'setProps': {'nullable': False, 'required': False},
 'style': {'nullable': False, 'required': False, 'type': 'dict'}}
***************************************************************

The errors in validation are as follows:


* figure        <- Invalid Plotly Figure:

'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe9' in position 5: ordinal not in range(128)

You can turn off these validation exceptions by setting
`app.config.suppress_validation_exceptions=True`

e.g., go.Figure errors because of u'Montr\xe9al'

[rmarren1]

^ Looks like this is an issue in plotly.py
plotly/plotly.py#1289

Is figure validation already implemented? I am looking for ways to boost performance and would prefer to turn this off if it's on by default.

[alexcjohnson]

No, if you construct your figure as a plain dict it will not be validated. @chriddyp my gut reaction is we should leave it that way, if people do want validation (with its associated overhead) they have plenty of options to get that already. Feel free to reopen though if you disagree.