In Chapter 3, Creating Visuals with SVG, we briefly examined the concept of paths. We saw that we could use paths and their associated mini-language to create multi-segment renderings by creating a sequence of commands. These paths, although very powerful, can be cumbersome to create manually.
But don't fret, as D3.js provides a number of objects to create complex paths using just a few JavaScript statements. These path generators take much of the pain out of creating complex paths manually, as they do the heavy lifting of assembling the sequence of commands automatically.
Additionally, an important type of graph we have not looked at in this book is a line graph. This has been purposefully pushed off until now, as it is the most commonly used to create lines using path generators. After the examples in this chapter, the power of the path to create lines will be evident.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
An overview of path data generators...