Pyinstaller encounters issues packaging new plotly/kaleido (Validator JSON)

[enricodragoni]

Hi All,

I have been using pyinstaller for a while in order to generate a Windows 11 exe from my Python script.
This is my setup:

• Python 3.11.9
• pip 25.2
• Pyinstaller 6.12.0
• Working with Virtual Environment
• In the venv I have plently of python packages that are needed (plotly, pandas, kaleido, etc.)

I run pyinstaller with:
.\.env\Scripts\pyinstaller.exe --clean --noconfirm .\myScript.spec

I recently upgraded my virtual environment with recent versions of plotly (6.3.0) and kaleido (1.2.0).
There are have been known issues in the plotly/kaleido community when it comes to write images to file, see one of the most famous ones here.
The newest release seem anyways to work fine writing images (previously you need to force a specific old version of kaleido), e.g. with these commands:
import plotly.io as pio
pio.write_html(fig, file=output_html, auto_open=False)`` fig.write_image(png_file)`

The problem is actually when the Windows exe I generated runs that code, as I am getting this error:
An unexpected error occurred: Validator JSON file not found: C:\Sources\dist\myScript\_internal\plotly\validators\_validators.json

The _validators.json is available in the virtual environment but nowhere in the _internal folder generated by pyinstaller.
Not sure if something is wrong when packaging such validators.json or other files, or if the problem lies somewhere else.

[bwoodsend]

Sounds like the plotly hook needs updating. In the short term, --collect-data=plotly.validators should keep it happy.

[enricodragoni]

That worked, many thanks.
I have changed my .spec file to include these line:
# -*- mode: python ; coding: utf-8 -*-
from PyInstaller.utils.hooks import collect_data_files

datas = []
datas += collect_data_files('plotly.validators')

a = Analysis(
...
...
datas=datas,