JavaScript and jQuery for Data Analysis and Visualization

Chapter 11Introducing D3

What's in This Chapter

• Getting started with D3
• Creating, manipulating, and destroying data-driven elements
• Working with D3 transitions
• Dealing with visually complex, nested data structures.
• Exploring D3's toolkit of functions for simplifying common tasks.
• Building a file system visualization using a built-in D3 layout.

CODE DOWNLOAD The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/go/javascriptandjqueryanalysis on the Download Code tab. The code is in the chapter 11 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

D3 is a JavaScript library for general purpose visualization. D3 possesses a powerful selection model for declaratively describing how data should be mapped to the visual elements. It comes bundled with a vast variety of helper functions that can be leveraged when building visualizations and is easily extensible to support custom functionality.

Unlike some other visualization libraries, D3 does not offer any prepackaged “standard” visualizations (bar chart, pie chart, and so on), although you can create your own. If you are only interested in standard quick visualizations then you should check out some of the libraries written on top of D3, such as NVD3 (http://nvd3.org/) and C3.js (http://c3js.org/).

On the surface, D3 appears to be similar to jQuery with regard to selecting and manipulating existing elements on the page. D3 adds a mechanism for adding or removing elements to ...