Integration with any charting library

This tutorial will help you connect a 3rd party visualization tool to Flexmonster Pivot Table and Charts. This simple example is based on d3.js and aims to illustrate the interaction between data from Flexmonster and external visualization. Integration with any other library will have similar basic steps.

The integration is based on the getData() API call. Read about it to understand the format that the data is returned in from the component. In this article we will connect the pivot table data with the d3.js chart step by step:

Adding the basis for a new chart

1. Add the component using data from a CSV file to your HTML page. Replace XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX with your license key. If you don't have a license key, contact our team and request a special trial key.

   <div id="pivotContainer">The component will appear here</div>
   <script src="https://cdn.flexmonster.com/flexmonster.js"></script>
   
   <script>
       let pivot = new Flexmonster({ 
           container: "pivotContainer",
           componentFolder: "https://cdn.flexmonster.com/",
           toolbar: true,
           report: {
               dataSource: {
                   filename: "data.csv"
               },
               slice: {
                   rows: [
                       { uniqueName: "Country" }
                   ],
                   columns: [
                       { uniqueName: "Business Type" },
                       { uniqueName: "[Measures]" } 
                   ],
                   measures: [
                       { uniqueName: "Price" }
                   ]
               }
           },
           licenseKey: "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX"
       });
   </script>

2. Add a container for the chart:

   <svg id="d3Chart" width="650" height="230"></svg> 

3. Add a reportcomplete event handler to know when the pivot table is ready to be a data provider:

   reportcomplete: function() {
       pivot.off("reportcomplete");
       createChart();
   } 

4. Add a function to create the chart. This function uses getData(options, callbackHandler, updateHandler).

   function createChart() {
       pivot.getData(
           {
               // define your slice 
           },
           drawChart,
           updateChart
       ); 
   } 

Try it on JSFiddle.

Preparing the data and drawing the chart

The most important part of drawing a chart is preparing the data by transforming it from the format returned by the getData() API call to the format that suits the 3rd party visualization tool:

let data = prepareDataFunction(rawData);

This example shows how to define and use a function (in our example it is prepareDataFunction) to process the data. This function should prepare data appropriately for the charting library format. In this example prepareDataFunction iterates through the data array from rawData and discards a record containing the grand total because it is unnecessary for the bar chart. The function also renames rows from r0 to member and values from v0 to value. This is not required, but it makes the code more readable when referring to the data later. We have the following pivot table:

Country	Total Sum of Price
Australia	1 372 281
France	1 117 794
Germany	1 070 453
Canada	1 034 112
United States	847 331
United Kingdom	779 899
Grand Total	6 221 870

The data array from rawData looks like this:

data:[
	{
		v0:6221870
	},
	{
		r0:"Australia",
		v0:1372281
	},
	{
		r0:"France",
		v0:1117794
	},
	{
		r0:"Germany",
		v0:1070453
	},
	{
		r0:"Canada",
		v0:1034112
	},
	{
		r0:"United States",
		v0:847331
	},
	{
		r0:"United Kingdom",
		v0:779899
	}
]

After prepareDataFunction, the data will look like this:

[
	{
		member:"Australia",
		value:1372281
	},
	{
		member:"France",
		value:1117794
	},
	{
		member:"Germany",
		value:1070453
	},
	{
		member:"Canada",
		value:1034112
	},
	{
		member:"United States",
		value:847331
	},
	{
		member:"United Kingdom",
		value:779899
	}
]

The drawChart function draws a chart using the processed data. In our JSFiddle example, the logic of drawing is the same as in the d3.js example. The updateChart function works similarly but clears the SVG first.