Preface

D3 is an amazing library. On its website, there are hundreds of beautiful examples, visualizations, and charts created mainly with D3. Looking at the examples, we soon realize that D3 allows us to create an uncanny variety of visuals. We can find everything from simple bar charts to interactive maps.

The ability to create almost anything with D3 comes at a price; we must think about our charts at a more abstract level and learn how to bind data elements with elements in our page. This association between properties of our data items and visual attributes of the elements in our chart will allow us to create complex charts and visualizations.

In real-life projects, we will have to integrate components and charts created with D3 with other components and libraries. In most of the examples in this book, we will cover how to integrate D3 with other libraries and tools, creating complete applications that leverage the best of each library.

Through the examples of this book, we will cover reusable charts using external data sources, thereby creating user interface elements and interactive maps with D3. At the end, we will implement an application to visualize topics mentioned on Twitter in real time.

D3 is a great tool to experiment with visuals and data. I hope you will have fun following the examples in this book and creating your own visualizations.