The D3 data visualization library

D3 is a JavaScript library used for building the visualizations from the Document Object Model (DOM) present in all the modern web browsers.

What is D3?

In more detail, D3 manipulates the DOM into abstract vector visualization components, some of which have been further tailed to certain visualization types, such as maps. It provides us with the ability of parsing from some common data sources and binding, especially to the SVG and canvas elements that are designed to be manipulated for vector graphics.

Some fundamentals

There are a few basic aspects of D3 that are useful for you to understand before we begin. As D3 is not specifically built for geographic data, but rather for general data visualization, it tends to look at geographic data visualization more abstractly. Data must be parsed from its original format into a D3 object and rendered into the graphic space as an SVG or canvas element with a vector shape type. It must then be projected using relative...