Use tempfile module to create temporary file for offline.plot

[joshburkart]

Right now the default file that plotly.offline.plot outputs to is temp-plot.html in the current working directory. I think it would be better to create a real temporary file using e.g. tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile so as not to pollute the current working directory?

Happy to contribute this myself but thought I'd test the waters first. :)

[joshburkart]

Another advantage would be avoiding the situation where you make two calls to plot in one script without specifying a file, and two browser windows are naturally opened up, but often both contain the second plot.

[chriddyp]

hey @joshburkart -
I'm a bit hesitant to use random filenames or temporary files because I think some users could accidentely fill up their hard-drive with a bunch of temporary plot files:

while True:
   plot(figure) # no filename specified - if we create a random filename, then this will create a new file on every iteration

Is my understanding of tempfile correct here?

Another advantage would be avoiding the situation where you make two calls to plot in one script without specifying a file, and two browser windows are naturally opened up, but often both contain the second plot.

I totally agree with you on this - it's really easy to accidentely overwrite a file the way we have it set up right now.

I'm open to other suggestions!

[jonmmease]

Let's revisit this as a configuration option when get to working on the plotly.io.show module (#1098)

[gvwilson]

Hi - this issue has been sitting for a while, so as part of our effort to tidy up our public repositories I'm going to close it. If it's still a concern, we'd be grateful if you could open a new issue (with a short reproducible example if appropriate) so that we can add it to our stack. Cheers - @gvwilson