Book Image

Hands-On Data Visualization with Bokeh

By : Kevin Jolly
Book Image

Hands-On Data Visualization with Bokeh

By: Kevin Jolly

Overview of this book

Adding a layer of interactivity to your plots and converting these plots into applications hold immense value in the field of data science. The standard approach to adding interactivity would be to use paid software such as Tableau, but the Bokeh package in Python offers users a way to create both interactive and visually aesthetic plots for free. This book gets you up to speed with Bokeh - a popular Python library for interactive data visualization. The book starts out by helping you understand how Bokeh works internally and how you can set up and install the package in your local machine. You then use a real world data set which uses stock data from Kaggle to create interactive and visually stunning plots. You will also learn how to leverage Bokeh using some advanced concepts such as plotting with spatial and geo data. Finally you will use all the concepts that you have learned in the previous chapters to create your very own Bokeh application from scratch. By the end of the book you will be able to create your very own Bokeh application. You will have gone through a step by step process that starts with understanding what Bokeh actually is and ends with building your very own Bokeh application filled with interactive and visually aesthetic plots.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Introduction to the Bokeh Server

Before creating our very own application using the Bokeh Server, it is important to formulate a clear picture of what the Bokeh Server actually is.

In very simple terms, the Bokeh objects that you create, such as the plots, axes, widgets, and almost anything and everything to do with your interactive visualization, are coded by you in Python. These Bokeh objects are then converted to JSON format by Bokeh.

In order to visualize this process, have a look at this diagram:

Within the context of the BOKEH SERVER, the Python code that you write is going to be converted to a JSON DOCUMENT. The JSON DOCUMENT is then rendered in JavaScript by the client library called BOKEHJS so that we can view the application in our BROWSER.

Bokeh does all of this for you, so no prior knowledge of JavaScript is required to make an application!

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