rid3

Rid3: Reagent interface to d3. Pronounced like the word 'ride'.

basics

examples

clojure meetup slides based on v0.1.0-alpha-3.

To use rid3, add the following to the :dependencies vector in your project.clj file:

[rid3 "0.2.2"]

Using an older version?

• Changes
• Previous docs

The Problem

In my experience, there is a lot of boilerplate involved when trying to get reagent (i.e., react) and d3 to play nicely together. The crux of the problem is you only want to append containing g tags (or static elements) to the DOM during reagent's component-did-mount lifecycle method and not during the component-did-update lifecycle method. However, more often than not, you want d3 to modify the stuff contained in the g tag in the same manner whether or not the component just mounted or just updated.

Rid3's Solution

Rid3 exposes a single reagent component, viz, with the aim to make 80% of what you'll likely want to make with d3 easier (bar charts, pie charts, scatter plots, etc.). Rid3 attempts to achieve this by making containing g tags for you. The benefit of doing this is that you can now use the same function in the did-mount and did-update lifecycle methods. However, rid3 goes a step further and will default the did-update lifecycle method to whatever you supply as the did-mount lifecycle method.

Viz Component

The viz component takes a hash-map of the following:

• an :id is required to differentiate between different rid3's
• a :ratom can be a reagent atom, reagent cursor, or a re-frame subscription. This should be used to store all of the data relevant to your rid3.

:svg

Where an svg hash-map looks like:

:main-container

Where a main-container hash-map looks like:

:pieces

And where :pieces is a vector of piece hash-maps. There are four kinds of piece hash-maps:

:container for when you want to group elem or elem-with-data pieces under the same g tag.

:elem for when you want to add an element like a text or a circle.

:elem-with-data for when you want to add a series of elements that are joined to a dataset.

• :elem-with-data pieces expect what is returned by the :prepare-dataset function to be a JavaScript array. E.g. [1, 2, 3] or [{"color": "blue"}, {"color": "green"} ... ]

• If :prepare-dataset is not provided, then (as a default):elem-with-data will convert whatever is stored in the :dataset key of your ratom to a JavaScript array.

• Individual datums (often referred to as "d") of the JavaScript array are passed to the anonymous functions that can be used to set properties of each :elem-with-data element. E.g. (.attr node "color" (fn [d] (goog.object/get d "color")))

• (1) You can use either :did-mount and :did-update or :gup. You cannot mix.

• If you choose to use :gup, then you can explicitly set attributes and add transitions in the :enter-init, :enter, :update, and :exit parts of the general update pattern.

• A gup-hash-map looks like:

{:enter-init  (fn [node ratom] ...)
 :enter       (fn [node ratom] ...)
 :update      (fn [node ratom] ...)
 :exit        (fn [node ratom] ...)}

• Note: only use :enter-init if you want a special enter transition when the vizusualiztion first mounts, otherwise, you can ignore it, and just use :enter, :update and :exit.

:raw for when you want to either trigger some side-effect or have an escape hatch from the rid3

Joy Rid3 (Minimal Example)

Just so you can get a sense of a vizcomponent, let's create a minimal example ... a circle with text on top of it.

Add rid3 to your project

Add the following to the :dependencies vector of your project.clj file.

[rid3 "0.2.2"]

Require rid3 in your namespace

(ns foo.core
  (:require
   [rid3.core :as rid3 :refer [rid3->]]))

Create an svg

(defn viz [ratom]
  [rid3/viz
   {:id    "some-id"
    :ratom ratom
    :svg   {:did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                         (rid3-> node
                                 {:width  200
                                  :height 200
                                  :style  {:background-color "grey"}}))}
    }])

Which will result in the following:

<div id="some-id">
  <svg width="200" height="200" style="background-color: grey;">
    <g class="rid3-main-container">
    </g>
  </svg>
</div>

Note: All viz components need to provide a ratom. All relevant data for the component should be stored here. If anything changes in this ratom, then rid3 will trigger a re-render of the viz component for you.

You probably noticed that rid3 added a g tag with the class .rid3-main-container inside of your svg. This is where rid3 will place all of your pieces.

You probably also noticed the use of rid3->. This is just syntactic sugar to set attributes with familiar hiccup-like attribute maps. The above is the same as doing the following:

(defn viz [ratom]
  [rid3/viz
   {:id    "some-id"
    :ratom ratom
    :svg   {:did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                         (-> node
                             (.attr "width" 200)
                             (.attr "height" 200)
                             (.style "background-color" "grey")))}
    }])

Add a circle

(defn viz [ratom]
  [rid3/viz
   {:id    "some-id"
    :ratom ratom
    :svg   {:did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                         (rid3-> node
                                 {:width  200
                                  :height 200
                                  :style  {:background-color "grey"}}))}
    ;; ATTENTION \/
    :pieces
    [{:kind      :elem
      :class     "backround"
      :tag       "circle"
      :did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                   (rid3-> node
                           {:cx 100
                            :cy 100
                            :r  50}))}]
    }])

Which will result in the following:

<div id="some-id">
  <svg width="200" height="200" style="background-color: grey;">
    <g class="rid3-main-container">
      <g class="backround">
	<circle cx="100" cy="100" r="50">
	</circle>
      </g>
    </g>
  </svg>
</div>

Please note, that there is no .append method in our did-mount function! Rid3 created a containing g tag and placed the circle inside of it for us. The node that is passed to the did-mount function is the circle itself. You can confirm this by looking at where the attributes from our did-mount function are added.

Add text

(defn viz [ratom]
  [rid3/viz
   {:id    "some-id"
    :ratom ratom
    :svg   {:did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                         (rid3-> node
                                 {:width  200
                                  :height 200
                                  :style  {:background-color "grey"}}))}
    :pieces
    [{:kind      :elem
      :class     "backround"
      :tag       "circle"
      :did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                   (rid3-> node
                           {:cx 100
                            :cy 100
                            :r  50}))}
     ;; ATTENTION \/
     {:kind      :elem
      :class     "foreground"
      :tag       "text"
      :did-mount (fn [node ratom]
                   (rid3-> node
                           {:x                  100
                            :y                  100
                            :text-anchor        "middle"
                            :alignment-baseline "middle"
                            :fill               "green"
                            :font-size          "24px"
                            :font-family        "sans-serif"}
                           (.text "RID3")))}]
    }])

Which will result in the following:

<div id="some-id">
  <svg width="200" height="200" style="background-color: grey;">
    <g class="rid3-main-container">
      <g class="backround">
	<circle cx="100" cy="100" r="50">
	</circle>
      </g>
      <g class="foreground">
	<text x="100" y="100" text-anchor="middle" alignment-baseline="middle" fill="green" font-size="24px" font-family="sans-serif">RID3
	</text>
      </g>
    </g>
  </svg>
</div>

Note: the order of pieces matters. If we reversed the order of our text and circle, we wouldn't be able to see the text (because it would be behind the circle).

Don't forget to check out the following:

basics

examples

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright © 2017 Matthew Jaoudi

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