Book Image

Learning D3.js 5 Mapping - Second Edition

By : Thomas Newton, Oscar Villarreal, Lars Verspohl
Book Image

Learning D3.js 5 Mapping - Second Edition

By: Thomas Newton, Oscar Villarreal, Lars Verspohl

Overview of this book

D3.js is a visualization library used for the creation and control of dynamic and interactive graphical forms. It is a library used to manipulate HTML and SVG documents as well as the Canvas element based on data. Using D3.js, developers can create interactive maps for the web, that look and feel beautiful. This book will show you how build and design maps with D3.js and gives you great insight into projections, colors, and the most appropriate types of map. The book begins by helping you set up all the tools necessary to build visualizations and maps. Then it covers obtaining geographic data, modifying it to your specific needs, visualizing it with augmented data using D3.js. It will further show you how to draw and map with the Canvas API and how to publish your visualization. By the end of this book, you'll be creating maps like the election maps and the kind of infographics you'll find on sites like the New York Times.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
6
Finding and Working with Geographic Data

Fetch

The D3 Fetch API is built off the Fetch specification also implemented in vanilla JavaScript as fetch(). It’s an alternative to Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX), which was used in previous versions of D3 to retrieve external data. Like AJAX, Fetch allows the developer to obtain data from the background of the web page. This technique is extremely useful in map development because geographic datasets can be very large. Acquiring the data from the background will help produce a refined user experience. In addition, in Chapter 6, Finding and Working with Geographic Data, we will cover techniques to compress the size of geographic data.

Separating the data from the code base will also provide the following advantages:

  • A lighter code base that is easier to manage
  • The ability to update the data without making code changes
  • The ability to use third-party providers...