Hello r/emacs
! First-time poster here!
I recently wanted to visualise some data in org-mode using a Python source block to generate an image, which was then rendered directly in the buffer.
It took my a couple of goes to work out how to do it.
Given some data like this:
#+begin_src bash :results output file :file data.njson
echo '{"name": "Spock", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "James Kirk", "editor": "Vim"}
{"name": "Dr McCoy", "editor": "Vim"}
{"name": "Scotty", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "Worf", "editor": "ed"}
{"name": "Geordi LaForge", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "Data", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "Jean-luc Picard", "editor": "VS Code"}
{"name": "Wesley Crusher", "editor": "VS Code"}
{"name": "William Riker", "editor": "Vim"}
'
#+end_src
A visualisation can be rendered as follows:
#+begin_src python :results output file :file usage.png
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import sys
df = pd.read_json("data.njson", lines=True)
axes = sns.histplot(df, x="editor")
axes.get_figure().savefig(sys.stdout.buffer)
#+end_src
The main trick here is to set the :results output file
header argument to write the output to a file, and to save the figure to sys.stdout.buffer
from Python.
I’ve written about this on my blog too, where you can see the [unsurprising] results of the analysis!
I highly recommend nix-direnv along with the direnv emacs package. I do everything with flakes, so I’d have a flake.nix
that defines a shell with the inputs I need, then I’d have a .envrc
with the contents use flake
in the same directory. With those in place, you may need to run direnv allow
in that directory, and then you can edit a .org
file in the same directory as the flake and the python environment will have what you need.
Here’s a flake I quickly made using a minimal template.
{
description = "Python environment for plotting with Seaborn";
inputs = {
nixpkgs.url = github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixpkgs-23.05-darwin;
flake-utils.url = github:numtide/flake-utils;
};
outputs = { self, nixpkgs, flake-utils }:
flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
let pkgs = import nixpkgs { inherit system; };
python = pkgs.python3.withPackages (ps: [
ps.pandas
ps.seaborn
]);
in {
devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
buildInputs = [ python ];
};
}
);
}
And then here’s the .org
file I tested with,
Example of plotting from this [[https://andykuszyk.github.io/2023-11-18-using-emacs-org-mode-as-a-jupyter-notebook.html][blog post]].
Some data to work with,
#+begin_src javascript :tangle data.njson
{"name": "Spock", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "James Kirk", "editor": "Vim"}
{"name": "Dr McCoy", "editor": "Vim"}
{"name": "Scotty", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "Worf", "editor": "ed"}
{"name": "Geordi LaForge", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "Data", "editor": "Emacs"}
{"name": "Jean-luc Picard", "editor": "VS Code"}
{"name": "Wesley Crusher", "editor": "VS Code"}
{"name": "William Riker", "editor": "Vim"}
#+end_src
And now we plot,
#+begin_src python :results output file :file usage.png
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns
import sys
df = pd.read_json("data.njson", lines=True)
axes = sns.histplot(df, x="editor")
axes.get_figure().savefig(sys.stdout.buffer)
#+end_src
#+RESULTS:
[[file:usage.png]]