Image borrowed from https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/mastering-d3js
Mastering D3.js
I’ve finally finished it. The delay for the book review was due to time constraints and was completely unrelated to the quality of the book. D3.js is an increasingly popular JavaScript library for creating data visualizations. Mastering D3.js takes you a step further than just creating charts and graphs. In this book, you’ll learn how to create reusable charts to be used in larger projects.
Who is Mastering D3.js For?
If you haven’t visited PacktPub for this information already, this book is for users with some experience with the charting library D3.js. If you do not have experience, PacktPub carries a few titles such as Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook and Data Visualization with d3.js that you can refer to first before reading this book.
Things to Look Forward to in Mastering D3.js
Mastering D3.js covers a number of topics that can be used to really enhance a project. This book goes beyond just some D3 charts; Mastering D3.js provides examples of implementing D3.js into Backbone and Node.js applications for interactive and real-time charts. The combination of numerous accessor methods, Node.js and Backbone integration, and creating a charting package is very useful for creating a separate component that can be implemented in future projects.
The dashboard chapter was really good in my opinion. In applications with a lot of data on users for example, dashboards can be a great way to display the data. This book covers some best practices when designing dashboards and also gives some direction on furthering your knowledge on data visualizations.
Some of the more advanced topics include the use of maps and different types of projection. Another is using real-time data which includes Node.js, Backbone, Socket.IO, and the twitter streaming API. the tutorial will bring you through both the server and client side of creating the real time data visualization application.
Things that could have been done better
I think the book was well written but there were a few things that could have made it even better. Unless you’re just skimming the book for a quick tutorial on how to accomplish a feature, the source code is pretty much necessary for following along with the examples. Also, the source code was not exactly the most friendly to run easily locally on your machine. A lot of the source could have been produced in a similar way to Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook where it could be seen running locally just by launching it in your browser.
Conclusion
If you plan on using multiple data visualizations in a project or one complex data visualization in multiple projects this book is definitely an asset. If you’ve purchased or are thinking of purchasing the book from somewhere other than PacktPub, contact them for the source files, they will definitely help going through the examples. If you don’t have prior experience with D3.js or are just looking for some data visualization examples to work off of I would recommend Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook.
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