2. Installing Dash and Plotly#

Once you have setup your environment, let’s install the dash and plotly Python libraries.

Getting ready#

For this recipe, we will use the preferred installer program in Python pip. So, make sure you have it available in your virtual environment.

Note that starting with Python 3.4, pip is included by default into all created virtual environments.

How to do it#

  1. You can install dash and plotly Python libraries by running the command

pip install dash

This will install the latest versions of both libraries. Alternatively, you can install them one by one by using

pip install plotly
pip install dash

  1. Install the pandas library by running

pip install pandas

Although pandas is not part of the Dash ecosystem, it is required by Plotly Express (a module of plotly) and we will use it extensively in our recipes.

  1. Verify the installation was successful by running

pip list

This will print a list of all libraries installed in your virtual environment. So, you should be able to see dash, plotly and pandas in that list.

How it works#

pip is the standard package manager system for Python. It allows you to install and manage packages that are not part of the Python standard library such as Plotly and Dash. By default pip installs packages from the Python Package Index but it also allows you to install them from other indexes, local files, and other sources.

There’s more#

Some useful pip commands

  • Uninstall a package

pip uninstall SomePackage

  • Install a specific version of a package

pip install SomePackage==1.0.4

  • Install a minimum- version of a package

pip install SomePackage>=1.0.4

  • Upgrade a package to the latest available

pip install --upgrade SomePackage