Exporting figures from Bokeh as svg or pdf?

Question

Is it possible to output individual figures from Bokeh as pdf or svg images? I feel like I'm missing something obvious, but I've checked the online help pages and gone through the bokeh.objects api and haven't found anything...

Support is planned. See https://github.com/bokeh/bokeh/issues/538#issuecomment-157931426 and https://groups.google.com/a/continuum.io/d/msg/bokeh/9lRQsnr-Dok/hMZQ28ZAS-QJ — koppor, Jan 08 '16 at 22:55
It is possible to create a pdf from bokeh using a svg export and tranforming the svg into pdf. All done using python. To see a complete example check this [SO-Post](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66045107/how-to-save-a-bokeh-plot-as-pdf/66045108#66045108). — mosc9575, Aug 17 '22 at 06:24

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 14 '17 at 16:37

There is no way to save PDF currently, but as of Bokeh 0.12.6, it is now possible to export PNG and SVG directly from Python code.

Exporting PNGs looks like this

export_png(plot, filename="plot.png")

And exporting SVGs looks like this

plot.output_backend = "svg"
export_svgs(plot, filename="plot.svg")

There are some optional dependencies that need to be installed. You can find more information in the Exporting Plots section of the User Guide.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '14 at 15:29

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In the meantime... as a workaround, until we get a native support, you can use phantom.js to convert the HTML output into a pdf file. We use it in our example testing directory to convert HTML generated plots into png images, but you could also get pdf images:

https://github.com/ContinuumIO/bokeh/blob/master/examples/test#L217

And more info here:

http://phantomjs.org/screen-capture.html

answered Jun 04 '14 at 15:29

Damian Avila

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Okay, investigating now... I'll update this if I get a working solution. – groundlar Jun 05 '14 at 09:50
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This works, but it only uses a screenshot of the page: I'm looking for something that allows me to save this in a scalable format. I guess I should've specified that in the question. – groundlar Jun 05 '14 at 11:18
Yep, not a complete solution yet, but we are discussing some possibilities to address this issue in the future. – Damian Avila Jun 07 '14 at 13:28
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The first link is broken. – Guillochon Dec 30 '15 at 22:31
This is no longer necessary please see the new answer about `export_png` and `export_svgs` – bigreddot Jun 14 '17 at 16:51

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 23 '19 at 07:39

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It seems that since bokeh uses html5 canvas as a backend, it will be writing things to static html pages. You could always export the html to pdf later.

edited Nov 23 '19 at 07:39

bigreddot

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answered Jun 04 '14 at 06:00

jjwon

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 17 '22 at 00:21

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So, it's 2022 now and there's no direct support for exporting images as pdf. However, there is a alternative way which works just as well.

First, as the other answers have mentioned, set the backend to 'svg'. plot.output_backend = "svg" then save the image as an svg file. Do not save it as an html file as this will likely lead to extra space around the actual image. Then use any online svg to pdf convertor to get the pdf equivalent of the svg.

answered Aug 17 '22 at 00:21

simpleParadox

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There is no need to use a online converter. A SVG to PDF converte exists in python, too. To see a complete example, check this [question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66045107/how-to-save-a-bokeh-plot-as-pdf/). – mosc9575 Aug 17 '22 at 06:30

Exporting figures from Bokeh as svg or pdf?

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