Book Image

Building Data-Driven Applications with Danfo.js

By : Rising Odegua, Stephen Oni
Book Image

Building Data-Driven Applications with Danfo.js

By: Rising Odegua, Stephen Oni

Overview of this book

Most data analysts use Python and pandas for data processing for the convenience and performance these libraries provide. However, JavaScript developers have always wanted to use machine learning in the browser as well. This book focuses on how Danfo.js brings data processing, analysis, and ML tools to JavaScript developers and how to make the most of this library to build data-driven applications. Starting with an overview of modern JavaScript, you’ll cover data analysis and transformation with Danfo.js and Dnotebook. The book then shows you how to load different datasets, combine and analyze them by performing operations such as handling missing values and string manipulations. You’ll also get to grips with data plotting, visualization, aggregation, and group operations by combining Danfo.js with Plotly. As you advance, you’ll create a no-code data analysis and handling system and create-react-app, react-table, react-chart, Draggable.js, and tailwindcss, and understand how to use TensorFlow.js and Danfo.js to build a recommendation system. Finally, you’ll build a Twitter analytics dashboard powered by Danfo.js, Next.js, node-nlp, and Twit.js. By the end of this app development book, you’ll be able to build and embed data analytics, visualization, and ML capabilities into any JavaScript app in server-side Node.js or the browser.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics
3
Section 2: Data Analysis and Manipulation with Danfo.js and Dnotebook
10
Section 3: Building Data-Driven Applications

Chapter 1: An Overview of Modern JavaScript

In this chapter, we will talk about some core JavaScript concepts. If you are new to JavaScript and need an introduction, check out Chapter 13, Appendix: Essential JavaScript Concepts.

Understanding some of the modern concepts of JavaScript is not a prerequisite to using Danfo.js, but we recommend going through this chapter if you're new to JavaScript or coming from a Python background, the reason being that we'll be using most of the concepts introduced here when building applications with Danfo.js. Also, it is worth mentioning that many of the concepts introduced here will, in general, help you to write better JavaScript.

This chapter introduces you to some modern JavaScript concepts, and by the end, you will have learned and understand the following concepts:

  • Understanding the difference between let and var
  • Destructuring
  • Spread syntax
  • Overview of scopes and closures
  • Understanding Array and Object methods
  • Understanding the this property
  • Arrow functions
  • Promises and async/await
  • Object-oriented programming and JavaScript classes
  • Setting up a modern JavaScript environment with transpilers
  • Unit testing with Mocha and Chai