Example D3.js + React integration

A small example exploring how to integrate D3.js data visualization components into a React app.

Demo: http://nicolashery.github.io/example-d3-react

Explanation

Context: React allows you to manipulate SVG, so you could probably re-write this repo in "pure React". Here, I assume that you might already have some D3 components you want to re-use, and/or you would rather write the data visualization parts of your app in D3.

I find that making D3 components play nice inside a React app becomes easier when you follow these simple rules:

(1) "One Source Of Truth": The D3 visualization should get all of the data it needs to render passed down to it. In this example, the single source of truth is in the main <App> React component's state, and is used by the D3 component (d3Chart) and React components (for example <Stats>).

(2) "Stateless All The Things": Related to (1), D3 and React components alike should be as stateless as possible, i.e. they shouldn't hide/encapsulate something that makes them render differently given the same "input". In this example, if you call d3Chart.update() at anytime with the same arguments, you always get the same result on screen.

(3) "Don't Make Too Many Assumptions": Related to (1) and (2), components shouldn't make too many assumptions about how they will be used. In this example, d3Chart doesn't prescribe when tooltips should show, it only shows whatever it receives in the tooltips array. This allows us to show tooltips on hover, but also to easily create a "show/hide all tooltips" toggle.

Quick start

Clone this repo, then:

$ npm install
$ npm start

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.