Greg Jopa

It's common to use d3.js to render svg charts on the client-side. With the d3 node module you can render svg charts on the server-side as well. The d3 node module uses jsdom to simulate the browser's Document Object Model (DOM) which allows for d3 selectors to work on the server-side.

Running D3 on the server with Node.js is pretty easy. You can reuse most of your client-side d3 code on the server. The only tricky part is integrating d3 widgets into your server-side views.

Getting started with running D3 on Node.js

Install the d3 node module using npm: npm install d3. The d3 node module uses jsdom which requires a C++ compiler. Read more about this dependency here: https://github.com/tmpvar/jsdom#contextify

After you get d3 installed you can require it like any other node module:

1var d3 = require('d3');

Reusable Chart Pattern

I recommend using the reusable chart design pattern for your charts: http://bost.ocks.org/mike/chart/. This modular pattern works great on the client and on the server. Since the reusable chart pattern is just a function you can assign it directly to module.exports:

1var barChart = module.exports = function() { ...

D3 View Helper

My demo app uses the express.js web framework with the ejs templating engine. I want to be able to integrate my D3 chart widgets into my view templates. I accomplished this by appending my chart widget to the jsdom and then getting it's outerHTML value and rendering it in my ejs template:

bar_chart_helper.js

1var getBarChart = function (params) {
2
3  var chart = barChart()
4    .data(params.data)
5    .width(params.width)
6    .height(params.height)
7    .xAxisLabel(params.xAxisLabel)
8    .yAxisLabel(params.yAxisLabel);
9
10
11  // append to jsdom
12  d3.select('body').append('div').attr('id', params.containerId).call(chart);
13
14  var selector = '#' + params.containerId;
15
16  // get html string "<div id="bar-chart-small"><svg class="svg-chart"> ..."
17  var svg = d3.select(selector).node().outerHTML;
18
19  // remove from jsdom
20  d3.select(selector).remove();
21
22  return svg;
23
24};

index.html

1<!-- ejs template -->
2<h1>D3 Server-side Demo</h1>
3<%-
4  barChartHelper.getBarChart({
5    data: fixtureData,
6    width: 400,
7    height: 300,
8    xAxisLabel: '2012',
9    yAxisLabel: 'Views',
10    containerId: 'bar-chart-small'
11  })
12%>

To see this code in action download my d3-server-side-demo express.js app here: https://github.com/gregjopa/d3-server-side-demo