How to install 'plotly' from inside Anaconda under Colab on Mac

Question

I tried to import plotly in Anaconda with code

import plotly.graph_objs as go
from plotly import __version__
from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, plot, iplot
init_notebook_mode(connected=True)

but received error

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ModuleNotFoundError                       Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-11-978bd9a5088a> in <module>
     14 
     15 # import plotly.plotly as py
---> 16 import plotly.graph_objs as go
     17 from plotly import __version__
     18 from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, plot, iplot

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'plotly'

I have checked a number of similar posts to install 'plotly' on Jupyter but somehow I couldn't do it on Mac. I usually use Google Colab, could it be the reason that I am using different platforms that caused the confusion when installing?

Answer 1

Jupyter Notebooks start in an "environment". Anaconda created the environment and it contains a lot of useful libraries. It also holds a self-contained python interpreter. In this instance, the environment didn't have the library plotly installed (it's not a default library that Anaconda provides) so you had to install plotly in your environment that the notebook lives in.

The environments that are used with Jupyter Notebooks are a little tricky to get to in order to install things, so this way, using import sys then installing the library with !{sys.executable} -m pip install plotly finds the python interpreter with !{sys.executable} and installs plotly using pip right in the Notebook itself.

More reading:

• Environments
• Pip
• Packages included with Anaconda

try:

import sys
!{sys.executable} -m pip install plotly
import plotly.graph_objs as go
from plotly import __version__
from plotly.offline import download_plotlyjs, init_notebook_mode, plot, iplot
init_notebook_mode(connected=True)