Skip to content

clarify error message when using unsupported marginal plot type #4654

Description

@wdecoster

Hi,

The error below had me stumped for quite a while:

import plotly as px
px.scatter(x=[1,2,3], y=[2,3,4], marginal_x="density")

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/wdecoster/miniconda3/envs/data_analysis/lib/python3.12/site-packages/_plotly_utils/importers.py", line 39, in __getattr__
    raise AttributeError(
AttributeError: module 'plotly' has no attribute 'scatter'
>>> import plotly.express as px
^[[Apx.scatter(x=[1,2,3], y=[2,3,4], marginal_x="density")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/wdecoster/miniconda3/envs/data_analysis/lib/python3.12/site-packages/plotly/express/_chart_types.py", line 66, in scatter
    return make_figure(args=locals(), constructor=go.Scatter)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/home/wdecoster/miniconda3/envs/data_analysis/lib/python3.12/site-packages/plotly/express/_core.py", line 2152, in make_figure
    trace = trace_spec.constructor(name=trace_name)
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'constructor'

It turns out that "density" is not a supported type for a marginal plot, and I should have used "violin" instead.
But could this error message perhaps be more explicit about what is going wrong?

Best,
Wouter

Activity

  1. self-assigned this
    on Jul 12, 2024
  2. removed their assignment
    on Aug 2, 2024
  3. changed the title [-]Cryptic error message when using unsupported marginal plot type[/-] [+]clarify error message when using unsupported marginal plot type[/+] on Aug 13, 2024
  4. added a commit that references this issue on Jun 16, 2026
    f9f0bce
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions