data handling with javascript
- by Vincent Warmerdam
Python has a very neat package called pandas which allows for quick data transformation; tables, aggregation, that sort of thing. A lot of these types of functionality can also be found in the python itertools module. The plyR package in R is also very similar.
Usually one woud use this functionality to produce a table which is later visualized with a plot.
I am personally very fond of d3, and I would like to allow the user to first indicate what type of data aggregation he wants on the dataset before it is visualized. The visualisation in question involves making a heatmap where the user gets to select the size of the bins of the heatmap beforehand (I want d3 to project this through leaflet). I want to visually select the ideal size of the bins for the heatmap.
The way I work now is that I take the dataset, aggregate it with python and then manually load it in d3. This is a process that takes a lot of human effort and I was wondering if the data aggregation can be done through the javascript of the browser. I couldn't find a package for javascript specifically built for data, suggesting (to me) that this is a bad idea and that one should not use javascript for the data handling.
Is there a good module/package for javascript to handle data aggregation?
Is it a good/bad idea to do the data aggregation in javascript (performance wise)?
