Julia Makie Recipes

Create custom Makie plot types using recipes. Recipes enable reusable, themeable visualizations that integrate seamlessly with Makie's ecosystem.

This skill focuses on creating recipes as package extensions. See julia-pkgextension for extension setup.

Recipe Types

Type Recipes (Simple Conversions)

Convert custom types to existing plot types:

function Makie.convert_arguments(P::Type{<:Makie.Heatmap}, data::MyType)
    matrix = extract_matrix(data)
    return Makie.convert_arguments(P, matrix)
end

Full Recipes (Custom Plot Types)

Makie.@recipe(CircuitPlot, circuit) do scene
    Makie.Theme(;
        gatewidth = 0.8,
        wirecolor = :black,
    )
end

@recipe Macro Syntax

Makie.@recipe(PlotTypeName, arg1, arg2, ...) do scene
    Makie.Theme(;
        attribute_name = default_value,
    )
end

Generated automatically:

• •Type: const PlotTypeName{ArgTypes} = Plot{plottypename, ArgTypes}
• •Functions: plottypename(args...) and plottypename!(ax, args...)

Implementing plot!

function Makie.plot!(plot::CircuitPlot)
    circuit = plot[:circuit][]  # Get argument value

    # Access attributes
    gw = plot.gatewidth[]

    # Draw using Makie primitives
    Makie.lines!(plot, xs, ys; color = plot.wirecolor)
    Makie.scatter!(plot, points; markersize = 10)
    Makie.poly!(plot, vertices; color = :blue)
    Makie.text!(plot, x, y; text = "label")

    return plot  # Always return plot!
end

Key points:

• •First argument to primitives is plot (the recipe plot object)
• •Access attributes with plot.attribute[] for current value
• •Access attributes with plot.attribute (no []) for Observable (reactive)

Makie Primitives Reference

Checklist

• • Add Makie to [weakdeps] and [extensions] in Project.toml
• • Create stub functions in main package (with docstrings)
• • Import stub functions in extension
• • Define recipe with Makie.@recipe
• • Implement Makie.plot! method
• • Always return plot from plot!
• • Create _axis convenience function for complete figures
• • Test with CairoMakie and GLMakie

Reference

• •Complete Examples - Full extension example with recipes
• •Patterns - Attributes, reactivity, axis configuration

Related Skills

• •julia-pkgextension - Package extension setup
• •julia-docs - Documenting extension functionality