Go Beyond Time-Series Charts with D3.js
Tags: Data Visualization, Javascript Library, Charting Library, D3js

At ChartIQ, we take users to the next level with charts that defy their expectations. Our HTLM5 charting library is world-renowned for its stellar performance, customization, and easy deployment. You’ll find our charts on millions of desktops around the world (check out Yahoo! Finance, for example). We’re always exploring ways to expand our charts into different segments of the finance landscape. For example, we recently created a way to visualize FICC with a Term Structure Graph, and our Post-Trade Visualization product is paving a new path for trade reconstruction. We also want to provide our users with a way to chart any data, not just financial data.

That’s why we’re giving users the power to build and manage a wide variety of chart styles using D3.js graphics from within the ChartIQ engine.

D3.js horizontal bar chart overlaid on a time-series mountain chart.

What is D3.js?

D3.js is a general purpose javascript library that helps users build beautiful, powerful graphics using modern web languages. D3’s emphasis on web standards gives users the full capabilities of modern browsers without committing to a proprietary framework. What does this mean for ChartIQ users? If you are already commingling or are planning on using D3.js graphics together with ChartIQ, your life just became a lot simpler.

Do more with less.

Although time series charts are our speciality, we understand there is a need to leverage different types of charts in an application — charts that are usually driven by the same underlying data. Clients often resort to using multiple charting libraries to achieve a particular look that may involve many different types of charts. But this can get very messy very quickly.

With D3.js being the most popular general purpose library in use, it made sense for us to allow developers to leverage it directly from the ChartIQ API. This gives them a way to create their own traditional charts, or go further and leverage the powerful D3.js technology to create any data visualization graphic they wish. Whether it’s an area chart or a bubble chart, the extension allows clients to build their own powerful visualization components using D3.js.

Advantages of D3.js within ChartIQ.

Managing multiple libraries — especially charting libraries — is no fun. You need to create and maintain separate methods for feeding data into each chart. When you use D3.js from within the ChartIQ library, any method created to feed the ChartIQ charts can also be re-used to feed data into your D3.js charts. This way you only need one single feed interface to manage all charts. As new data is provided to the single feed, the ChatIQ drivers will manage all of the necessary redrawing and refreshing of all visualizations, including D3.js, ensuring they are all in sync and always displaying the most up to date information. All this occurs while leveraging familiar ChartIQ API methods. It’s a powerful tool that gives diverse graphic results.

D3.js pie chart and donut chart, updating with ChartIQ time-series chart simultaneously.

What is provided out-of-the-box?

ChartIQ includes wrappers for pie and donut-style proportional charts, as well as methods for creating your own wrappers for any other D3.js rendering of your choice. Within the wrappers, the data ingestion methods, node transformations, scaling methods, and the other features of D3 are fully available. More built-in wrappers will be made available in upcoming releases to continue to grow “out of the box” D3 functionality.

We’re excited to bring our clients more options for data visualization and the ability to expand beyond time series.

Learn more about ChartIQ.

About the Author

Gus Matlis is the VP of Engineering at ChartIQ. He is an accomplished technology leader with extensive experience managing all aspects of client services and operations in the financial sector, specializing in support and hosting needs of online financial solutions and batch operations. Gus is a founding partner of Automated Financial Systems (now part of SunGard). He’s been with ChartIQ since 2014.