# Makie - passing keyword arguments through a @recipe
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** makie
**Created:** [September 18, 2024, 12:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549 "2024-09-18T12:37:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@farr](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/farr)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2024, 12:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549/1 "2024-09-18T12:37:17Z")
Hi,
I’m trying to define a new recipe in Makie that is essentially an enhanced contour plot, and I would like any kwargs that get passed in the call for my new recipe to automatically get passed-through to my call to contour!. But it’s not clear to me how to do this.
More information: I’m trying to make new plot recipe that will use a kernel density estimate to plot 2D contours of the density of some points. I want `kdecontour(x, y; kwargs...)` to become a `contour` plot that plots density contours, and passes the options in `kwargs` onward to `contour`. My recipe looks like
```julia
@recipe(KDEContour, x, y) do scene
Theme(
levels = [0.1, 0.5],
xexpansionfactor = 0.1,
yexpansionfactor = 0.1,
xgridsize=128,
ygridsize=129
)
end
```
```julia
function Makie.plot!(kdecontour::KDEContour)
x = kdecontour.x[]
y = kdecontour.y[]
pts = vcat(x', y')
k = KDE(pts)
p_kde_pts = [pdf(k, pts[:,i]) for i in axes(pts, 2)]
p_levels = [quantile(p_kde_pts, l) for l in kdecontour.levels[]]
dx = maximum(x)-minimum(x)
dy = maximum(y)-minimum(y)
fx = kdecontour.xexpansionfactor[]/2
xgrid = range(minimum(x)-fx*dx, maximum(x)+fx*dx, length=kdecontour.xgridsize[])
fy = kdecontour.yexpansionfactor[]/2
ygrid = range(minimum(y)-fy*dy, maximum(y)+fy*dy, length=kdecontour.ygridsize[])
z = [pdf(k, [x, y]) for x in xgrid, y in ygrid]
# I want any additional kwargs to get passed along to this invocation of `contour!`
contour!(kdecontour, xgrid, ygrid, z; levels=p_levels)
end
```
(Nevermind that I’m ignoring all the `Observable` machinery for now—I’ll put that in later.). How do I do this?
Will
---
### Author:  [@jules](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jules)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2024, 7:22am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549/2 "2024-09-19T07:22:27Z")
There’s `kdecontour.attributes`, you could `copy` that and `pop!` the observables you need elsewhere from it and then pass the remaining thing to `contour`
---
### Author:  [@farr](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/farr)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2024, 2:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549/3 "2024-09-19T14:02:34Z")
Sweet! That’s what I didn’t know about—thanks!
---
### Author:  [@sdanisch](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sdanisch)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2024, 2:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549/4 "2024-09-19T14:24:21Z")
In newer versions you can also do:
```julia
contour!(kdecontour, shared_attributes(kdecontour, Contour), xgrid, ygrid, z; levels=p_levels)
```
---
### Author:  [@BambOoxX](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/BambOoxX)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2026, 11:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/makie-passing-keyword-arguments-through-a-recipe/119549/5 "2026-07-20T11:52:58Z")
Hi @sdanisch, I’m wondering how this could be working for `FooMakieExt` extensions… In fact, I’ve used the following pattern.
In the package, define
```julia-auto
function fooplot end
function fooplot! end
```
and in the extension
```julia-auto
module FooMakieExt
import fooplot,fooplot!
Makie.@recipe(FooPlot, arg1) do scene
...
end
function Makie.plot!(plt::Fooplot{<:Tuple{Arg1Type}})
...
end
end
```
This way `fooplot` and `fooplot!` can be accessed from other packages if `Makie` is loaded, however `FooPlot` itself only lives in the extension.
What would be the proper way to make `shared_attributes(someplot,Fooplot)` possible ?