Not saving html interactive file with R - html

Question

I am trying to design a circos plot using BioCircos R package. BioCircos allows to save the plots as .html interactive files. However, when I run the package using RScript the saved .html file is empty. To save the .html file I used saveWidget option from htmlwidgets package. Is it something wrong with saveWidget option? The code I used follows:
#!/usr/bin/Rscript
######R script for BioCircos test
library(htmlwidgets)
library(BioCircos)
genomes <- list("chra1" = 217471166, "chra2" = 181034961, "chra3" = 153873357, "chra4" = 153961319, "chra5" = 164033575,
"chra6" = 154486312, "chra7" = 133565930, "chra8" = 147241510, "chra9" = 91218944, "chra10" = 52432566, "chrb1" = 843366180, "chrb2" = 842558404, "chrb3" = 707956555, "chrb4" = 635713434, "chrb5" = 567300182,
"chrb6" = 439630435, "chrb7" = 236595445, "chrb8" = 231667822, "chrb9" = 230778867, "chrb10" = 151572763, "chrb11" = 103205957) # custom genome
links_chromosomes_01 <- c("chra1", "chra2", "chra3", "chra4", "chra4", "chra5", "chra6", "chra7", "chra7", "chra8", "chra8", "chra9", "chra10") # Chromosomes on which the links should start
links_chromosomes_02 <- c("chrb2", "chrb3", "chrb1", "chrb9", "chrb10", "chrb4", "chrb5", "chrb6", "chrb1", "chrb8", "chrb3", "chrb7", "chrb6") # Chromosomes on which the links should end
links_pos_01 <- c(115060347, 102611974, 14761160, 128700431, 128681496, 42116205, 58890582, 40356090,
146935315, 136481944, 157464876, 39323393, 84752508, 136164354,
99573657, 102580613,
111139346, 120764772, 90748238, 122164776,
44933176, 18823342,
48771409, 128288229, 150613881, 18509106, 123913217, 51237349,
34237851, 53357604, 78270031,
25306417, 25320614,
94266153,
41447919, 28810876, 2802465,
45583472,
81968637, 27858237, 17263637,
30569409) ### links chra chromosomes
links_pos_02 <- c(410543481, 463189512, 825903588, 353914638, 354135472, 717707494, 643107332, 724899652,
583713545, 558756961, 642015290, 154999098, 340216235, 557731577,
643350872, 655077847,
85356666, 157889318, 226411560, 161566470,
109857786, 25338955,
473876792, 124495704, 46258030, 572314729, 141584107, 426419779,
531245660, 220131772, 353941099,
62422773, 62387030,
116923325,
76544045, 33452274, 7942164,
642047816,
215981114, 39278129, 23302654,
418922633) ### links chrb chromosomes
links_labels <- c("aldh1a3", "amh", "cyp26b1", "dmrt1", "dmrt3", "fgf20", "hhip", "srd5a3",
"amhr2", "dhh", "fgf9", "nr0b1", "rspo1", "wnt1",
"aldh1a2", "cyp19a1",
"lhx9", "pdgfb", "ptch2", "sox10",
"cbln1", "wt1",
"esr1", "foxl2", "gata4", "lrpprc", "serpine2", "srd5a2",
"asns", "ctnnb1", "srd5a1",
"cyp26a1", "cyp26c1",
"wnt4",
"ar", "nr5a1", "ptgds",
"fgf16",
"cxcr4", "pdgfa", "sox8",
"sox9")
tracklist <- BioCircosLinkTrack('myLinkTrack', links_chromosomes_01, links_pos_01,
links_pos_01, links_chromosomes_02, links_pos_02, links_pos_02,
maxRadius = 0.55, labels = links_labels)
#plotting results
plot_chra_chrb <- BioCircos(tracklist, genome = chra_chrb_genomes, genomeFillColor = "RdBu", chrPad = 0.02, displayGenomeBorder = FALSE, genomeLabelTextSize = "10pt", genomeTicksScale = 4e+3,
elementId = "chra_chrb_comp_plot_test.html")
saveWidget(plot_chra_chrb, "chra_chrb_comp_plot_test.html", selfcontained = F, libdir = "lib")
The command line to run this script:
Rscript /path_to/Circle_plot_test.r
I tried to use this script in RStudio (without saveWidget() command), however it took too long to run in my personnel computer and the results was not displayed. However, this could be due to memory usage setup because when I took off some data, the script easily generates the plot in RStudio and I am able to save it. Is there other way to save the .hmtl interactive files in R or am I doing something wrong using htmlwidgets package in my script?
Thanks all in advance for any help and comments.

Answer 1

When you said it took too long to run, that was a sign that something was wrong! You weren't getting anything when you used saveWidget, because there is nothing returned from BioCiros.
I found two things that are a problem. The first one will result in a blank output—you can't use a '.' in the element ID. This ID will be used in the HTML coding.
You were getting huge delays due to the scale you set for genomeTickScale. That scaling value is for a tick mark attribute. I'm not sure why you set it to .004. However, when I comment out that line, it renders immediately. I have no issues with saving the widget, either.
--One other thing, you had chra_chrb_genomes as the object name assigned to the parameter genome in the function BioCircos. I assumed it was the object genome from your question since it was the only unused object.
The only things I changed were in the BioCircos function:
(plot_chra_chrb <- BioCircos(tracklist, genome = genomes, #chra_chrb_genomes,
genomeFillColor = "RdBu",
chrPad = 0.02,
displayGenomeBorder = FALSE,
genomeLabelTextSize = "10pt",
# genomeTicksScale = 4e+3, # problematic
elementId = "chra_chrb_comp_plot_test" # no periods
))