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Elastic Charts overview

Rationale

This library is a complete rewrite of the current vislib in Kibana and EUISeriesChart in EUI. The rationale behind this refactoring is the need for a testable and decoupled architecture for displaying data within charts. The current EUI implementation is based on ReactVis, which directly manipulates the data series inside components without a clear rendering pipeline and without a clean way to extend it. Some of the downsides of using ReactVis are:

  • the main chart component, before rendering children, looks at their props and recomputes them, injecting new props. Some configuration is accessed through references to children components.
  • the components are themselves SVG components that render bars, lines, and axes. The problem with this is that not all components can be rendered at the same time, but there is the need for a rendering pipeline to allow a correct placement for all the geometries, especially when we face the need for having auto-scaled axis dimensions.
  • the only way to test the chart is testing the resulting SVG component. If rendered through canvas the test can be only a visual regression test.
  • no possibility of manage x-indexing of elements

Rendering pipeline

This new implementation revisits the concept of a charting library and tries to apply a unidirectional rendering flow to the concept of charting. The rendering flow is the following:

rendering-pipeline

This controlled flow allows us to achieve the following points:

  • the computation of series dimensions (x and y domains of the datasets, for example) are required to precompute the space required for the axis labeling. Axis rendering is dependent on the axis displayed values, and thus on the data series provided. This is a required passage to accommodate automatically spaced axes . Other libraries just live the developer with the needs to specify static margin space to render the axis labels, and this can result in truncated labels.
  • put a testing probe just before rendering the chart, the computed geometries are the exact values that need to be used to render on SVG, canvas or WebGL on that exact portion of the screen. No further calculation is needed on the rendered component. x, y, width, height, color, and transforms are computed before the rendering phase.
  • reduce the rendering operation to the minimum required. Resizing, for example, will only require the last 3 phases to complete.
  • decouple the chart from its rendering medium: can be SVG, canvas or WebGL, using React or any other DOM library.
  • part of this computation can also be processed server side or on a WebWorker.

The rendering pipeline is achieved by revisiting the way a chart library is built. Instead of creating a chart library around a set of rendering components: bar series, axis etc., this new implementation decouples the specification of the chart from the rendering components. The rendering components are part of the internals of the library. We are exposing empty react components to the developer, using the JSX format just as a declarative language to describe the specification of your chart and not as a set of real react components that will render something. That is achieved using the following render function on the main Chart component:

<Provider chartStore={this.chartSpecStore}>
  <Fragment>
    <SpecsParser>{this.props.children}</SpecsParser>
    <ChartResizer />
    {renderer === 'svg' && <SVGChart />}
    {renderer === 'canvas' && <CanvasChart />}
    {renderer === 'canvas_native' && <NativeChart />}
    <Tooltips />
  </Fragment>
</Provider>

Where all the children passed are rendered inside the SpecsParser, that signal a state manager that we are updating the specification of the chart, but doesn't render anything. The actual rendering is done by one of the rendered like the ReactChart that is rendered after the rendering pipeline produced and saved the geometries on the state manager.

A spec can be something like the following:

<Chart renderer={renderer}>
  <Settings rotation={rotation} />
  <Axis id="bottom" position={AxisPosition.Bottom} title="Rendering test" />
  <Axis id="left" position={AxisPosition.Left} />
  <LineSeries
    id="1"
    yScaleType={ScaleType.Linear}
    xScaleType={ScaleType.Linear}
    xAccessor="x"
    yAccessors={['y']}
    data={BARCHART_1Y0G}
  />
  <BarSeries
    id="2"
    yScaleType={ScaleType.Linear}
    xScaleType={ScaleType.Linear}
    xAccessor="x"
    yAccessors={['y1', 'y2']}
    splitSeriesAccessors={['g']}
    stackAccessors={['x', 'g']}
    data={BARCHART_2Y1G}
  />
</Chart>

General concepts

Axes

The concept of an axis in this library follow the following constraints:

  • there is no distinction between x-axis or y-axis.
  • the distinction is between the position of the axis on the chart (top, bottom, left, or right) in relation to the rotation of the chart: A standard horizontal bar chart with a Y axis (for a dependent variable whose values rise to the top) can be supported by left and right axis that will show the Y values, and the bottom and top axes will show the X axis for an independent variable. In contrast, a 90-degree (clockwise-rotated) bar chart, with Y values that spread from left to right, will have a horizontal (bottom/top) axis that shows the Y independent variable and the left/right vertical axis that shows the X variable.

As a constraint, we allow only one X-axis, but we provide the ability to add multiple Y-axes (also if it's a discouraged practice (see https://blog.datawrapper.de/dualaxis/ or http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/blog/2016/2/1/be-gone-dual-y-axis)).

Dataset Domains

Related to a dataset is the extent of a variable. It usually used to draw the position of the specific value/datum along one axis (vertical or horizontal). On a series chart, we always need to have at least two domains, representing the 2 dimensions of the data we are drawing.

Data

It's an array of values, that will be used to compute the chart. Usually, each element must have at least 2 values to be charted. Multiple values can be used to specify how we want to split the chart by series and by y values.

Examples of datasets:

// 1 metric (y) and no groups/split series ===> 1 single series
const BARCHART_1Y0G = [{ x: 0, y: 1 }, { x: 1, y: 2 }, { x: 2, y: 10 }, { x: 3, y: 6 }];

// 2 metrics (2y) and 1 group/split series ===> 4 different data series
const BARCHART_2Y1G = [
  { x: 0, g: 'a', y1: 1, y2: 4 },
  { x: 0, g: 'b', y1: 3, y2: 6 },
  { x: 1, g: 'a', y1: 2, y2: 1 },
  { x: 1, g: 'b', y1: 2, y2: 5 },
  { x: 2, g: 'a', y1: 10, y2: 5 },
  { x: 2, g: 'b', y1: 3, y2: 1 },
  { x: 3, g: 'a', y1: 7, y2: 3 },
  { x: 3, g: 'b', y1: 6, y2: 4 },
];

These datasets can be used as input for any type of chart specification. These are the interfaces that make up a BasicSpec (some sort of abstract specification)

export interface SeriesSpec {
  /** The ID of the spec */
  id: SpecId;
  /** The name or label of the spec */
  name?: string;
  /** The ID of the spec group
   * @default __global__
   */
  groupId: GroupId;
  /** An array of data */
  data: Datum[];
  /** The type of series you are looking to render */
  seriesType: SeriesType;
  /** Set colors for specific series */
  color?: SeriesColorAccessor;
  /** If the series should appear in the legend
   * @default false
   */
  hideInLegend?: boolean;
  /** Index per series to sort by */
  sortIndex?: number;
}

export interface SeriesAccessors {
  /** The field name of the x value on Datum object */
  xAccessor: Accessor;
  /** An array of field names one per y metric value */
  yAccessors: Accessor[];
  /** An optional accessor of the y0 value: base point for area/bar charts  */
  y0Accessors?: Accessor[];
  /** An array of fields thats indicates the datum series membership */
  splitSeriesAccessors?: Accessor[];
  /** An array of fields thats indicates the stack membership */
  stackAccessors?: Accessor[];
  /** An optional array of field name thats indicates the stack membership */
  colorAccessors?: Accessor[];
}

export interface SeriesScales {
  /**
   * The x axis scale type
   * @default ScaleType.Ordinal
   */
  xScaleType: ScaleType.Ordinal | ScaleType.Linear | ScaleType.Time;
  /**
   * If using a ScaleType.Time this timezone identifier is required to
   * compute a nice set of xScale ticks. Can be any IANA zone supported by
   * the host environment, or a fixed-offset name of the form 'utc+3',
   * or the strings 'local' or 'utc'.
   */
  timeZone?: string;
  /**
   * The y axis scale type
   * @default ScaleType.Linear
   */
  yScaleType: ScaleContinuousType;
}

A BarSeriesSpec for example is the following intersection type:

export type BarSeriesSpec = SeriesSpec &
  SeriesAccessors &
  SeriesScales & {
    seriesType: SeriesType.Bar;
  };

A chart can be feed with data in the following ways:

  • one series type specification with one data props configured.
  • a set of series types with data props configured. In these case the data arrays are merged together as the following rules:
    • x values are merged together. If the chart has multiple different xScaleTypes, the main x scale type is coerced to ScaleType.Linear if all the scales are continuous or to ScaleType.Ordinal if one scale type is ordinal. Also, a temporal scale is, in specific cases, coerced to linear, so be careful to configure correctly the scales.
    • if there is a specified x domain on the spec, this is used as x domain for that series, and it's merged together with the existing x domains.
    • specifications with splitAccessors are split into different series. Each specification is treated in a separated manner: if you have one chart with 3 series merged to one chart with 1 series, this results in a chart that has each x value split in two (the number of specification used, two charts) than on split is used to accommodate 3 series and the other to accommodate the remaining series. If you want to treat each series in the same way, split your chart before and create 4 different BarSeries specs, so that these are rendered evenly on the x-axis.
    • bar, area, line series with a stackAccessor are stacked together each stacked above their respective group (areas with areas, bars with bars, lines with lines. You cannot mix stacking bars above lines above areas).
    • bar series without stackAccessors are clustered together for the same x value
    • area and line series, without stackAccessors are just drawn each one on their own layer (not stacked nor clustered).
    • the y value is influenced by the following aspects:
      • if there is a specified y domain on the spec, this is used as y domain for that series
      • if no or only one y-axis is specified, each y value is treated as part of the same domain.
      • if there is more than one y-axis (visible or not), the y domains are merged in respect of the same groupId. For e.g. two bar charts, and two y-axes, each for a spec, one per bar value. The rendered bar heights are independent of each other, because of the two axes.
      • if the data are stacked or not. Stacked produce a rendering where the lower bottom of the chart is the previous series y value.

On the current Visualize Editor, you can stack or cluster in the following cases:

  • when adding multiple Y values: each Y value can be stacked (every type) or clustered (only bars)
  • when splitting a series, each series can be stacked (every type) or clustered (only bars)

Multiple charts/Split charts/Small Multiples (phase 2)

Small multiples are created using the <SmallMultiples> component, that takes multiple <splitSeries> component with the usual element inside. <splitSeries> can contain only BarSeries AreaSeries and LineSeries Axis and other configuration need to be configured outside the splitSeries element.

In the case of small multiples, each splitSeries computes its own x and y domains. Then the x domains are merged and expanded. The same happens with the main Y domains; they are merged together.

Color/Style overrides

BarSeries

Each bar datum of a Bar data series can be assigned a custom color or style with the styleAccessor prop.

The styleAccessor prop expects a callback function which will be called on every datum in every bar series with the signiture below. This callback should return a color string or a partial BarSeriesStyle, which will override any series-level styles for the respective datum. You are passed seriesIdentifier to identify the series the datum belongs to and the raw datum to derive conditions against.

Return types:

  • Color: Color value as a string will set the bar fill to that color
  • RecursivePartial<BarSeriesStyle>: Style values to be merged with base bar styles
  • null: Keep existing bar style
type BarStyleAccessor = (
  datum: RawDataSeriesDatum,
  seriesIdentifier: XYChartSeriesIdentifier,
) => RecursivePartial<BarSeriesStyle> | Color | null;

LineSeries and AreaSeries points

Each point datum of a Line or Area data series can be assigned a custom color or style with the pointStyleAccessor prop.

The pointStyleAccessor prop expects a callback function which will be called on every datum in every line or area series with the signiture below. This callback should return a color string or a partial PointStyle, which will override any series-level styles for the respective datum. You are passed seriesIdentifier to identify the series the datum belongs to and the raw datum to derive conditions against.

Return types:

  • Color: Color value as a string will set the point stroke to that color
  • RecursivePartial<PointStyle>: Style values to be merged with base point styles
  • null: Keep existing point style
type PointStyleAccessor = (
  datum: RawDataSeriesDatum,
  seriesIdentifier: XYChartSeriesIdentifier,
) => RecursivePartial<PointStyle> | Color | null;

Note: When overriding bar or point styles be mindful of performance and these accessor functions will be call on every bar/point is every series. Precomputing any expensive task before rendering.