Book Image

Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook

By : Nick Zhu
Book Image

Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook

By: Nick Zhu

Overview of this book

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. "Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook" is packed with practical recipes to help you learn every aspect of data visualization with D3. "Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook" 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. "Data Visualization with D3.js 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 custom interpolators, custom tweening, timers, the layout manager, 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.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Binding an array as data


One of the most common and popular ways to define data in D3 visualization is through the use of JavaScript arrays. For example, say you have multiple data elements stored in an array, and you want to generate corresponding visual elements to represent each and every one of them. Additionally, when the data array gets updated, you want your visualization to reflect such changes immediately. In this recipe, we will accomplish this common approach.

Getting Ready

Open your local copy of the following file in your web browser:

https://github.com/NickQiZhu/d3-cookbook/blob/master/src/chapter3/array-as-data.html

How to do it...

The first and most natural solution that might come to mind is iterating through the data array elements and generating their corresponding visual elements on the page. This is definitely a valid solution and it will work with D3, however, the enter-update-exit pattern we discussed in the introduction provides a much easier and more efficient way to...