Migrating from WebDataRocks to Flexmonster

This guide will walk you through the process of transitioning from WebDataRocks to Flexmonster.

Let’s break the migration into small steps.

1. Installation
2. Creating a pivot instance
3. Setting a slice
4. Data sources
5. Migrating from WebDataRocks in Angular

Installation

All the possible ways of getting Flexmonster are described in the Get Flexmonster guide.

Creating a pivot instance

Next, replace the WebDataRocks initialization API call with Flexmonster’s:

var pivot = new Flexmonster({ 
    container: "pivotContainer",   
    report: { 
        dataSource: {
            filename: "data.csv"  
        }  
    }
}); 

Notice the differences between the init API calls of Flexmonster and WebDataRocks.

Flexmonster has an additional componentFolder parameter, which should point to the flexmonster/ folder. Read more about Flexmonster initialization parameters.

Setting a slice

In WebDataRocks, we specified which hierarchies to put into the rows, columns, and measures by defining a Slice Object. The structure of the slice in Flexmonster is no different, except that measures should be placed in square brackets:

"slice": {
    "rows": [  
        { "uniqueName": "Customer" }     
    ],    
    "columns": [      
        { "uniqueName": "Month" },     
        { "uniqueName": "[Measures]" }   
    ],   
    "measures": [     
        { 
            "uniqueName": "Revenue",       
            "aggregation": "sum"     
        }     
    ]     
} 

Data sources

Flexmonster allows you to connect to many more types of data sources. On top of CSV and JSON, you can analyze data from relational or NoSQL databases, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, SSAS, Mondrian, and custom data source API. To learn how to connect to these sources, refer to the following guides:

• Connecting to JSON
• Connecting to CSV
• Connecting to relational databases
• Connecting to NoSQL databases
• Connecting to MongoDB databases
• Connecting to Elasticsearch
• Connecting to Microsoft Analysis Services
• Implementing the custom data source API

Migrating from WebDataRocks in Angular

If you are working on an Angular project, follow these steps:

Step 1. Install Flexmonster CLI —  the most convenient way to work with Flexmonster Pivot:

npm install -g flexmonster-cli

Now a new flexmonster command is available in the console.

Step 2. Install the Flexmonster Angular module – run the following Flexmonster CLI command from the folder containing package.json:

flexmonster add ng-flexmonster

This command will install the ng-flexmonster package to node_modules/ and add it as an npm dependency to package.json.

Step 3. Add CSS and JS references to the angular.json file:

"styles": [    
    "styles.css",
    "/node_modules/flexmonster/flexmonster.min.css"
 ], 
"scripts": ["/node_modules/flexmonster/flexmonster.full.js"] 

Step 4. Replace the WebDataRocksPivot module with FlexmonsterPivotModule in app.module.ts. app.module.ts can be found inside the PROJECT-NAME/src/app folder. It should look as follows:

import { FlexmonsterPivotModule } from 'ng-flexmonster';
@NgModule({
     ...
     imports: [FlexmonsterPivotModule],
     ... }) 

Step 3. Find the wbr-pivot directive that includes the pivot table and replace it with an fm-pivot directive. Here is an example:

<wbr-pivot 
 [report]="'https://cdn.flexmonster.com/reports/report.json'">
</wbr-pivot>

should be changed to:

<fm-pivot
 [report]="'https://cdn.flexmonster.com/reports/report.json'">
</fm-pivot> 

Step 3. Build and run your application from the console:

ng serve

The default port that the application listens to is 4200. Open http://localhost:4200/ in your browser to see the results.

To find out more about integrating Flexmonster Pivot with Angular, check out the Integration with Angular guide.