Here is my requirement:
I need to create a visualization of links between different representations of a person. The image below I think indicates that fairly clearly.
Additionally, those rectangles would also contain some data about that representation of a person (such as demographics and the place). I also need to be able to handle events when clicking on the boxes or the links between them, as a sort of management tool (so, for example, double clicking a link to delete it, or something along those lines). Just as importantly, since the number of people and links will varies, I need it to be displayed by spacing out the people in a roughly equidistant fashion like the image shows.
What would be a javascript library that could accomplish this? I have done some research and have yet not found something that can cleanly do this but I'm hardly an expert in those libraries.
Here are the ones I've looked at:
Arbor js: Can dynamically create the spacing and links of the graph but I'm responsible for rendering all the visuals and there's really no hooks for things like clicking the links.
jsPlumb: Easily create connections between elements and draws them nicely enough but doesn't seem to address any layout issues. Since I don't know how many people will be on the screen, I have to be able to space them out equidistant and that doesn't seem to be a concern of jsPlumb.
D3.js: This creates a good visualization with the spacing I need but I don't see how I can show the data inside each node or do things like like mouse events on the links or box.
I'm feeling a bit lost so I'm hoping someone could point me to something that could help me or maybe point me to an example from one of these libraries that shows me that what I want is possible.
I ended up using Arbor with Raphael as my rendering library and it's worked out very well.
Take a look at Dracula Graph Library. It's a simple library that seems to do both layout as well as rendering graphs (using Raphael under the hood). It's a bit underdeveloped however.
Related
I'd like to achieve something similar to this diagram using d3:
https://gojs.net/latest/samples/records.html
I was trying to look it up on the web but I hardly found any resources to get started with.
I'm quite new to d3 so I don't know how to approach this task, any help or guidance would be appreciated!
This is another one of those questions where people need to implement a sophisticated diagram visualization and they think just because D3 is a lot about visualization, it will be a good fit.
IMHO it is not.
D3 could be a part of the solution, but it certainly cannot be the solution alone: It's almost like asking whether JavaScript can be used to create this kind of diagram. Of course it can! D3 is just a very thin (but very useful) layer on top of the DOM+JavaScript, that can help you with crunching numbers, work with colors, coordinate systems, create DOM elements, and simplifies working with the DOM. Think of it as jquery for DOM and data plus a lot of very nice demos. But the value very often is in the demos, rather than in D3 itself: You need to implement a lot of things to get from a simple mapping from data to dom elements to a sophisticated diagram visualization like the one you are referring to.
If you don't want to implement and maintain most of the low-level diagram logic yourself, you should rather be looking at a diagramming solution, rather than a tool that will help you create SVG elements elegantly with less code.
Look at this question to see a list of graph and diagram visualization software. Agreed, D3 is also on this list (for the same reason you are asking this question), but there are also far more capable tools on that list that you should be looking at, my recommendation being either the one that you've found already or preferrably this one if your requirements are more sophisticated.
I have a SVG generated map for the game I am developing. I have no problems with the game being open-source and it uses open web technologies such as HTML and SVG. No problems there.
But at the same time I want the players not to be able to see or reverse engineer a map of the whole world (to retain true exploration). For now I generate map using a seed that is secret and not version controlled. So even though the algorithm is known curious players can use open-sourced code to generate "game-like worlds" but not that exact one. This solves the "global" problem.
But since SVG is rendered on a page as a single Voronoi diagram all the data (I don't mind the coordinates of points) would be extractable. Data like resources, land types, biomes, climate etc. could be fetched from SVG to gain an upper hand in finding good locations for settlements.
Any idea how to prevent that? Players have limited vision so I thought about either:
not rendering the whole Voronoi diagram at all (just the visible part), but that could be potentially tricky to do (maybe, haven't looked into it yet),
inserting the resource/land tile data into SVG graph only to visible locations
I can see the benefits of both approaches and if done correctly it could even boost the performance (not rendering the whole thing/rendering with less data) and lead to bigger worlds without impacting performance.
Any other ideas/programming/architectural approaches to help with the issue?
(I am using Vue.js, d3.js, svg-pan-zoom and Laravel backend just in case it helps.)
The ideas that you gave are perfect, but for implementing them, you need to make hard work, and spend much time.
I have a suggestion. Is will work for most of the users. Maybe some users will "hack" it. But I believe it will work for 95% of the times.
You can create a very big rectangle, from the top left point 0,0 until the right bottom point. The rectangle will be white, and it will be over all other shapes.
This way if someone will download the SVG, we will see nothing. Just a big white rectangle.
In you game HTML, you can add a CSS selector, to hide this rectangle.
If you following this method, most of the users (who don't have a photo editing software) will not be able to see the map.
Users who knows how to inspect elements in HTML may see the map. But I believe that most of them who will see a white box, will not believe that there is something behind.
I think that this is a simple temporary approach that you can do, before doing other more defensive ways.
I'm about to develop a UI for medical research application. I need to make a time series line graph. Main issue is the amount of data:
5,000 points per graph, with a few of them displayed simultaneity. I’m expecting 50,000 points processed all together.
The question is what presentation library?
The main features I’m looking for are: Handles huge data sets, Zoom, annotations, live update.
I’m already looking into http://dygraphs.com/ and http://meteorcharts.com/
I wouldn't want any library that renders the data as DOM elements, or that uses SVG (from performance perspective)
Well, I think I'll give everyone my own answer to my question:
Dygraphs (http://dygraphs.com/) seems to be on the spot. The documentation, although a lot of apparent efforts, leaves a lot to be desired. But from performance, features and flexibility, it's the best I've seen. At least for my current project needs.
Way to go, Dygraphs!
Have you checked out D3? I'm using that for a lot of graph visualization. It looks like this example renders to svg.
My stuff renders to a SVG for force graph visualizations too, but it looks like D3 might be able to use either a canvas or SVG, but I'm not positive about what all can be rendered to which. Honestly, I'd give D3 a try even with SVG, it might be fast enough. I remember reading something about someone simulating thousands of particles using D3's force graph visualizations without issues. It's SUPER easy to get your data into the right format for it to use.
Good luck!
I am developing a very similar application.
I am currently using Flot for the chart rendering. It handles annotations and zoom, take a look at their plugin library.
I recommend this downsampling plugin which will speed up graph rendering. Rendering 5000 points on your graph is useless: you have less vertical pixels on your screen than that! so this library will only render those that actually have a visual importance.
This only gives you the graph. You may want some kind of dashboard to present all that... I am currently looking at Grafana, which is used for a totally different purpose but makes awesome dashboards. It may be possible to "rip out" their dashboarding features (it uses Flot as well).
Another option is Hightcharts, but that's not free.
Check raphael js Library
Raphaël is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the web. If you want to create your own specific chart or image crop and rotate widget, for example, you can achieve it simply and easily with this library.
I'm trying to create line graphs like the one in the image below.
It needs to have a very light weight(in kb), and needs to have points that I could hover(for a tooltip about that point, like in the image). I don't need pie charts or anything like that, just line graphs like above.
I'm just not sure how to go about it best, I don't know canvas, and i'm assuming that might be pretty complex trying to do what I need with canvas. I know jQuery decently well.
I'm wondering: Is there a very light weight framework/plugin that would allow me to do just the bare essentials like in the image? If not, how would you suggest going about this with jQuery?
All I need are the lines drawn, with points that I could trigger a hover on, I can take care of the tooltip and all that, i'm just trying to figure out how to draw all the lines the match up with the grid, and get the little circle elements in the right position.
Thanks so much.
ps: light weight to me is not more than a few kb, because I want them to be interactive(not just a static image), but i'm not going to have so many of them that I need a huge jquery plugin, just something small.
Also: I'm trying to make it so it's responsive, and shrinks to fit a phones screen.
SVG sounds just like what you are looking for. You can use a library such as JQuery SVG or Raphael (based on Prototype.js) to make it easier.
Google Chart API is very solid and easy to use. Here is an example of a simple Line Chart
http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/?type=visualization#line_chart
You can also Interact with the charts you create:
https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/basic_interactivity
https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/events
I don't know how lightweight you could possibly get to do what you want, for that kind of thing I would normally use flot.
If you are not planning any manipulation on the graphs. Use a PHP library called pChart
Check out Google Charts. It looks like the perfect thing. It doesn't use flash, so it's smaller than some, and it has tooltips. As a bonus, you can use live data on the web.
I'm looking for a way to create an interactive bullet graph, which will allow the user to click anywhere in the graph and set a marker, then calculate some simple values based on where this marker is at. For example, I'd like it to look similar to this:
http://www.usrecordings.com/test-lab/bullet-graph.htm
Yet, allow the user to click inside it and have it calculate values. I don't want the user limited to the axis values either, it should be able to figure out what the value is between them. Has this been done anywhere before or do I need to start something from scratch?
Flot may be able to do what you need.
Check out some of the examples, particularly the interactive one. It's open source, so you can add any functionality you need to it. This should be a good starting point.
HTML canvas is a great place to start. A brief google search showed there may not be many interactive charts available. These are a couple HTML canvas examples, the first being math, the second the w3c spec: Polynomials, HTML Canvas w3c. I've found that searching for HTML canvas game examples produce many more tutorials than straight HTML canvas examples. I don't know what your programming abilities are, so I'm giving you these links with the assumption you have javascript experience.
Have fun.
Oh and thanks for asking if it's been done before.