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Circular Import Dependency in Plotly Templates

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python

Research direction

Reproduce the failure with plotly==5.24.1 and plotly-resampler==0.10.0, then inspect plotly.graph_objs.init.py and layout/template/data/_heatmapgl.py. Trace the import order from the reported FigureResampler example. Done means the example imports and constructs the figure without requiring a manual plotly.graph_objs import first.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug P1

The issue is that plotly's template system has a circular import dependency:

  1. plotly.graph_objs.__init__.py imports all trace types including Heatmapgl
  2. During this import process, it also loads template data
  3. layout/template/data/_heatmapgl.py tries to import Heatmapgl from plotly.graph_objs
  4. But plotly.graph_objs is still in the process of being imported!

This occurred when attempting to use plotly and plotly-resampler and a heatmap.

Reproduction of Error

Minimal reproduction code:

import plotly.graph_objs as go
go.Heatmapgl()  # ✅ Success

# But this fails:
from plotly_resampler import FigureResampler
fig = FigureResampler(go.Figure())  # ❌ Circular import

Versions affected:

plotly==5.24.1
plotly-resampler==0.10.0

Work around

This can be worked around by forcing import order:

import plotly.graph_objs  # Force full initialization first
from plotly_resampler import FigureResampler  # Then import resampler
Dominant language
Python
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