Interactive circle packing with R

This chart follows posts #305 and #306 that explains how to build a static version of circle packing, and how to customize it.

This interactive version is very close to the static one. It uses the ggiraph library to transform the ggplot2 code in something interactive. The steps are quite easy:

• First you need to prepare a column in the data frame with the text you want to display while hovering.
• Second, you need to change the geometries to use the interactive geometries of ggiraph.

Check the code below:

# libraries
library(packcircles)
library(ggplot2)
library(viridis)
library(ggiraph)

# Create data
data <- data.frame(group=paste("Group_", sample(letters, 70, replace=T), sample(letters, 70, replace=T), sample(letters, 70, replace=T), sep="" ), value=sample(seq(1,70),70)) 

# Add a column with the text you want to display for each bubble:
data$text <- paste("name: ",data$group, "\n", "value:", data$value, "\n", "You can add a story here!")

# Generate the layout
packing <- circleProgressiveLayout(data$value, sizetype='area')
data <- cbind(data, packing)
dat.gg <- circleLayoutVertices(packing, npoints=50)

# Make the plot with a few differences compared to the static version:
p <- ggplot() + 
  geom_polygon_interactive(data = dat.gg, aes(x, y, group = id, fill=id, tooltip = data$text[id], data_id = id), colour = "black", alpha = 0.6) +
  scale_fill_viridis() +
  geom_text(data = data, aes(x, y, label = gsub("Group_", "", group)), size=2, color="black") +
  theme_void() + 
  theme(legend.position="none", plot.margin=unit(c(0,0,0,0),"cm") ) + 
  coord_equal()

# Turn it interactive
widg <- ggiraph(ggobj = p, width_svg = 7, height_svg = 7)
# widg

# save the widget
# library(htmlwidgets)
# saveWidget(widg, file=paste0( getwd(), "/HtmlWidget/circular_packing_interactive.html"))