Bokeh Plotting: Enable tooltips for only some glyphs

Thanks to this page in Google Groups I figured out how this can be done.
Link here

Edit 2015-10-20: looks like the google group link doesn’t work anymore unfortunately. It was a message from Sarah Bird @bokehplot.

Edit 2017-01-18: Currently this would add multiple hover tool icons to the tool bar. This may cause problems. There is already an issue filed at github here. Alternatively, try @tterry’s solution in the answer below.

Essentially you need to (bokeh version 0.9.2):

  1. not add hover in your tools when you create the figure
  2. create glyphs individually
  3. add glyphs to your figure
  4. set up the hover tool for this set of glyphs
  5. add the hover tool to your figure

Example:

import bokeh.models as bkm
import bokeh.plotting as bkp

source = bkm.ColumnDataSource(data=your_frame)
p = bkp.figure(tools="add the tools you want here, but no hover!")
g1 = bkm.Cross(x='col1', y='col2')
g1_r = p.add_glyph(source_or_glyph=source, glyph=g1)
g1_hover = bkm.HoverTool(renderers=[g1_r],
                         tooltips=[('x', '@col1'), ('y', '@col2')])
p.add_tools(g1_hover)

# now repeat the above for the next sets of glyphs you want to add. 
# for those you don't want tooltips to show when hovering over, just don't 
# add hover tool for them!

Also if you need to add legend to each of the glyphs you are adding, try using bokeh.plotting_helpers._update_legend() method. github source Eg:

_update_legend(plot=p, legend_name="data1", glyph_renderer=g1_r)

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