Bar charts with NA not working when using plotly as backend

[Noskario]

Holoviews: 1.14.6
Plotly: 5.3.1
Bokeh: 2.3.3

I want to create a bar-chart with the plotly backend. I use the aggregate-function to count the number of items in each category. Let me show an example.
First I create some test-data:

import holoviews as hv
hv.extension('plotly')
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
samples = 100

pets = ['Cat', 'Dog', 'Hamster', 'Rabbit']
genders = ['Female', 'Male']

pets_sample = np.random.choice(pets, samples)
gender_sample = np.random.choice(genders, samples)
df=pd.DataFrame(data={'pet':pets_sample,'gender':gender_sample,})
df['pet']=pd.Categorical(df['pet'])
df['gender']=pd.Categorical(df['gender'])
# Delete male hamsters so we have an empty category-combination
df=df[~((df['pet']=='Hamster') & (df['gender']=='Male'))]
df['name']=['Animal #'+str(i) for i in range(len(df))]
df=df[['name','pet','gender']]
df

When I try to plot this, using

bars = hv.Bars(df, kdims=['pet', 'gender'],vdims='name').aggregate(function=np.count_nonzero)

bars.opts(width=1000,multi_level=False)

I get the following error: ValueError: Out of range float values are not JSON compliant.

The reason for that is (I think) that there is one NA in the aggregated table:

hv.Table(df, kdims=['pet', 'gender'],vdims='name').aggregate(function=np.count_nonzero)

returns

You can solve this problem by adding a new column to the dataframe, just consisting of ones and use np.sum instead of np.count_nonzero and then everything works:

df['ones']=1
bars=hv.Bars(df, kdims=['pet', 'gender'],vdims=[('ones','count')]).aggregate(function=np.sum)
bars.opts(width=1000,multi_level=False)

I think NA's should default to zero when making Bar-charts. My original approach works fine if I use bokeh as backend.

[jbednar]

I agree; there should probably be a df.fillna(0) somewhere. A suitable PR would be welcome!

[jlstevens]

Given that you get an exception, I'll classify this as a bug. Note that the plotly backend is marked as experimental: as Jim says, a PR would be very welcome but otherwise this is unlikely to have high priority.

[github-actions]

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