plots

A repository of visualizations for policy reforms.

What is a plot?

Plots are single html files which contain visual elements (e.g. images, charts, graphs) to communicate an insight regarding some facet of economic policy.

Installation

Install the plots package using the following commmand:

python setup.py install

TODO: Add conda recipe

Create A Plot

info.yml

The info.yml file contains metadata for the plot and is required to contain the following key-value pairs:

plot_name: Tax Reform Explorer
plot_id: tax_reform_explorer
content: tax-reform-explorer.html
thumbnail: thumbnail.png
short_description: This plot shows a short amount of stuff
long_description: This plot shows a long amount of stuff
Concept_credit: Citation for concept
Development_credit: Citation for development
OSS_credit: Citation for open source software projects
best_width: recommended width when embedding
best_height: recommended height when embedding
build_cmd: shell command used to build the plot
version: version number

resources directory

Any supporting files (e.g. .js, .css, .png) should be placed in a resources directory within the plot directory.

Note: All files placed in the resources will be uploaded/made-public to taxplots.

environment.yml

Conda environment.yml files allow for reproducible environments for building plots. The plots tools as a whole have an environment.yml file located in the root of the code repository. Each plot in contrib is also required to have an environment.yml file. When building a plot, that plot's environment file should be active.

To create an environment.yml file from an existing conda environment, browse to the plot's directory in your preferred shell, and run conda env export > environment.yml.

Example Output:

name: my_viz_env
dependencies:
- pytest
- setuptools
- python
- numpy
- pandas <=0.16.2
- numba
- toolz
- six
- ipython
- ipython-notebook
- bokeh
- pip:
  - pytest-pep8

To recreate the environment specified in the plot's environment.yml file, browse to the plot's directory in your preferred shell, and run conda env create. Then activate the environment with source activate <env-name>

Plot Command-line Tools

Install with the taxplots python package is a command-line interface (cli) which provides the following utilites:

List Plots

list-plots

The list-plots commnad will display information about plots available in the contrib directory.

Upload Plots

The upload-plots cli tool will upload plots to an s3 bucket and including a web_manifest.json file which can be used to discover available plots from a 3rd Party applications.

upload-plots

To use the upload utility, you must have the following environment variables set:

    export AWS_KEY_ID=<my_aws_access_key>
    export AWS_SECRET_ID=<my_aws_secret_key>
    export TAXPLOT_S3_BUCKET=taxplots

TODO: Add content

Contributing a Plot

• fork this repository
• add a new plot directory to the contrib directory whose name should contain no spaces, or invalid url characters.
• to your new directory, add the html file which represents your plot
• submit a Pull Request to taxplots