Description:

Added 2 new boolean attributes to the layour object: hoveranywhere and clickanywhere, which respectively allow plotly_hover and plotly_click events to be received anywhere in the plot area and not just over traces.

When hovering/clicking on empty space and with no nearby trace, the events will fire with an empty points array but includes xvals, yvals, xaxes, and yaxes so you still get cursor coordinates in data space. When hovering/clicking over a trace, the event behaves as before with full point data.

Example:

layout: {
  hoveranywhere: true, // enables hover events anywhere, even on empty plotting area
  clickanywhere: true // same for click events
}

See this codepen for an interactive demo of this feature

New API:

hoveranywhere

• Type: boolean
• Default: false
• When true, plotly_hover events fire for any cursor position within the plot area, not just over traces. Events on empty space include an empty points array plus xvals and yvals with cursor coordinates in data space.

clickanywhere

• Type: boolean
• Default: false
• When true, plotly_click events fire for any click position within the plot area, not just over traces. Events on empty space include an empty points array plus xvals and yvals with click coordinates in data space.