PyXLL Holoviz Extension

Extension package for the Python Excel add-in PyXLL to add support for Holoviz charts and panels.

This package enables displaying HoloViews, hvPlot, and panel objects in Excel via the PyXLL function pyxll.plot.

Requirements

• PyXLL >= 5.9.0

Installation

To install, run the following in the same Python environment that the PyXLL add-in is configured to use:

pip install pyxll-holoviz

For installing the Excel add-in PyXLL see the PyXLL user guide.

Examples

The following is a simple example taken from the Holoviz hvplot examples.

It uses hvplot to create a scatter plot figure, and then uses pyxll.plot to display that figure in Excel using PyXLL.

import pyxll
from bokeh.sampledata.penguins import data as df
import hvplot.pandas

@pyxll.xl_func
def test_plot():
    # Create the holoviews figure using hvplot
    figure = df.hvplot.scatter(x='bill_length_mm',
                               y='bill_depth_mm',
                               by='species',
                               responsive=True)

    # Show the figure in Excel
    pyxll.plot(figure)

When this function is called from Excel as a worksheet function, the figure is displayed as an interactive chart in Excel. The kwarg reponsive=True is used so that the figure scales automatically if resized in Excel.

This next example shows how to display a panel in Excel and is taken from the panel basic tutorial.

import pyxll
import panel as pn

@pyxll.xl_func
def test_panel():
    # Create a holoviz panel object
    panel = pn.panel("Hello World")

    # Show the panel in Excel
    pyxll.plot(panel)

When this function is called from Excel as a worksheet function, the panel is displayed as an interactive widget in Excel below the cell where the function was called.

Extras

As well as supporting displaying Holoviz objects via pyxll.plot this package also adds a right click context menu hvPlot Explorer and a new hvplot UDF (worksheet function).

hvPlot Explorer

To use the hvPlot explorer, select a tabular range of data in Excel including the column headers. Then right click to bring up the right click context menu and select hvPlot Explorer.

This will add the Holoviz explorer panel to the worksheet as an interactive control.

hvplot UDF

The worksheet function hvplot plots a pandas DataFrame using hvplot.

Parameters are passed in as a dictionary of keyword arguemnts (kwargs), and additionally as pairs of (key, value).

kwargs can be passed as the second argument as an array, or as additional arguments with the key as one argument followed by the value as the next argument. This is is to allow for passing values are are arrays that can be passed as part of the first kwargs array.

For example, to call the equivalent of the Python code:

df.hvplot(kind='scatter', x='index', y=['value1', 'value2'])

The Excel formula would be the following, where the input DataFrame is in cell A1:

=hvplot(A1,
        {"kind", "scatter"; "x", "index"},
        "y", {"value1", "value2"})

Config

The custom context menu (ribbon) component of this extension can be diabled by adding the following to your pyxll.cfg config file:

[HOLOVIZ]
disable_ribbon = 1