D3.js is a JavaScript library designed to display digital data in dynamic graphical form. It helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS. D3 allows great control over the final visual result, and it is the hottest and most powerful web-based data visualization technology on the market today.
D3 v4 is the latest release of the D3 library. This second edition cookbook has been completely updated to cover and leverage the D3 v4 API, modular data structure, as well as revamped force implemented. It is designed to provide you with all the guidance you need to get to grips with data visualization with D3. With this book, you will create breathtaking data visualization with professional efficiency and precision with the help of practical recipes, illustrations, and code samples.
This cookbook starts off by touching upon data visualization and D3 basics before gradually taking you through a number of practical recipes covering a wide range of topics you need to know about D3.
You will learn the fundamental concepts of data visualization, functional JavaScript, and D3 fundamentals, including element selection, data binding, animation, and SVG generation. You will also learn how to leverage more advanced techniques such as interpolators, custom tweening, timers, queueing, hierarchy, force manipulation, and so on. This book also provides a number of pre-built chart recipes with ready-to-go sample code to help you bootstrap quickly.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with D3.js, is designed to get you up and running with D3.js, covering fundamental aspects, such as what D3.js is, and how to set up a typical D3.js data visualization environment.
Chapter 2, Be Selective, covers one of the most fundamental tasks you need to perform with any data visualization project using D3: selection. Selection helps you target certain visual elements on the page.
Chapter 3, Dealing with Data, explores the most essential question in any data visualization project: how to represent data in both programming constructs and its visual metaphor.
Chapter 4, Tipping the Scales, covers the one key task that you need to perform over and over again as a data visualization developer, that is, mapping values in your data domain to visual domain, which is the focus of this chapter.
Chapter 5, Playing with Axes, explores the usage of the axes component and some related techniques commonly used in the visualization based on the Cartesian coordinates system.
Chapter 6, Transition with Style, deals with a saying that is arguably one of the most important cornerstones of data visualization, "a picture is worth a thousand words." This chapter covers transition and animation support provided by the D3 library.
Chapter 7, Getting into Shape, deals with Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG), which is a mature World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard widely used in visualization projects.
Chapter 8, Chart Them Up, explores one of the oldest and trusted companions in data visualization: charts. Charts are a well-defined and well-understood graphical representation of data.
Chapter 9, Lay Them Out, focuses on the D3 layout. D3 layouts are algorithms that calculate and generate placement information for a group of elements capable of generating some of the most complex and interesting visualizations.
Chapter 10, Interacting with Your Visualization, focuses on D3 human visualization interaction support or, in other words, how to add computational steering capability to your visualization.
Chapter 11, Using Force, covers one of the most fascinating aspects of D3: force. Force simulation is one of the most awe-inspiring techniques that you can add to your visualization.
Chapter 12, Know Your Map, introduces the basic D3 cartographic visualization techniques and how to implement a fully functional geographic visualization in D3.
Chapter 13, Test Drive Your Visualization, guides you to implement your visualization like a pro with Test-Driven Development (TDD).
Appendix A, Building Interactive Analytics in Minutes, serves as an introduction to Crossfilter.js and DC.js on interactive dimensional charting.
A text editor to edit and create HTML, CSS. and JavaScript files
A modern web browser (Firefox 3, IE 9, Chrome, Safari 3.2, and later)
A local HTTP server to host data file for some of the more advanced recipes in this book. We will cover how to set up a Node-based or Python-based simple HTTP server in the first chapter.
Optionally, you will need a Git client if you would like to check out the recipe source code directly from our Git repository
If you are a developer or an analyst familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and you wish to get the most out of D3, then this book is for you. This book can also serve as a desktop quick-reference guide for experienced data visualization developers.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Create a new user for JIRA in the database and grant the user access to the jiradb database we just created using the following command:"
A block of code is set as follows:
var timeFormat = d3.time.format.iso;
var data = crossfilter(json); // <-A
var hours = data.dimension(function(d){
return d3.time.hour(timeFormat.parse(d.date)); // <-B
});New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Select System info from the Administration panel."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors .
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
Log in or register to our website using your e-mail address and password.
Hover the mouse pointer on the SUPPORT tab at the top.
Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
Enter the name of the book in the Search box.
Select the book for which you're looking to download the code files.
Choose from the drop-down menu where you purchased this book from.
Click on Code Download.
You can also download the code files by clicking on the Code Files button on the book's webpage at the Packt Publishing website. This page can be accessed by entering the book's name in the Search box. Please note that you need to be logged in to your Packt account.
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
WinRAR / 7-Zip for Windows
Zipeg / iZip / UnRarX for Mac
7-Zip / PeaZip for Linux
The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Data-Visualization-with-D3-4.x-Cookbook . We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/ . Check them out!
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.