ggplotly not recognizing geom_rect fill from ggplot in R

Question

I am trying to determine how to ensure that the fill of a geom_rect in ggplot2 is respected once wrapped in plotly::ggplotly() .

Example:

I first create a data.frame that contains the values I'll use to generate my plot.

library(ggplot2)
library(plotly)

dat <- data.frame(provider = rep(c('a','b','c'),2),
           category = c(rep(c('Inpatient'),3),rep(c('Outpatient'),3)),
           revenue = runif(6,100,500),
           background_col = rep(c('red','green','blue'),2)
           )

Using just ggplot the background panel colors on the geom_rect are respected

ggplot(dat,aes(x=category,y=revenue)) +
              geom_rect(data = dat,aes(fill = background_col),xmin = -Inf,xmax = Inf,
                        ymin = -Inf,ymax = Inf,alpha = 0.1) +
              geom_bar(stat = 'identity') +
              facet_grid(~provider)

But, when I wrap it with ggplotly , those background colors disappear.

ggplotly(ggplot(dat,aes(x=category,y=revenue)) +
                          geom_rect(data = dat,aes(fill = background_col),xmin = -Inf,xmax = Inf,
                                    ymin = -Inf,ymax = Inf,alpha = 0.1) +
                          geom_bar(stat = 'identity') +
                          facet_grid(~provider))

Any thoughts? I'm not super familiar with all the intricacies of plotly , so any insights are helpful!

Answer 1

Not sure how to get this automatically, but one workaround that ggplotly bug is to use specific numbers in place of -Inf and Inf:

ggplotly(ggplot(dat,aes(x=category,y=revenue)) +
           geom_rect(data = dat,aes(fill = background_col),xmin = 0,xmax = 3,
                     ymin = -25,ymax = 475,alpha = 0.1) +
           geom_bar(stat = 'identity') +
           facet_grid(~provider))