Tag Archives: d3.js

modular d3 app with commonJS and webpack

Modular d3 app with commonJS and webpack

Creating modular d3 app with commonJS and webpack

In my previous post, I wrote about how to break up the d3 visualization app into different modules. It turns out that there is a better way to write modular d3 app, using commonJS and webpack.

Update on 6/May/2016:(webpack 1, deprecated) For a more idiomatic approach using webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin, visit webpack’s documentation on code splitting. The approach described in this post has the limitation of not being able to produce separate output files for app and vendor libraries, which is addressed by the idiomatic approach.

Update on 23/March/2017: (webpack 2, recommended) For a more idiomatic approach using CommonsChunkPlugin, visit webpack 2’s guide on code splitting. The approach described in this post has the limitation of not being able to produce separate output files for app and vendor libraries, which is addressed by the idiomatic approach.

Update on 12/Sep/2016: This post is gaining lots of popularity since d3.js v4 is released under npm. The approach described below should still work in theory although I have not tested it. Let me know if it doesn’t.

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d3.js app structure

d3.js app structure – separating concerns

d3.js is a popular JavaScript library mainly used for front-end visualization. There are a lot of examples on how to use it, but there are very few resources that talks about d3.js app structure, i.e. how to break down the app into modular components. In this blog post, I will use my project for visualizing contributions on GitHub to demonstrate the d3.js app structure that I like to use. Continue reading