Evidence Chart Library

Our chart library has a flexible, declarative API that lets you build customized, composable charts or choose from a selection of chart templates (Quick Charts).

While our library offers a lot of customizable features, our defaults let you create beautiful, publication-quality charts with as little as a single line of code.

Chart Elements

Horizontal Chart (swapXY=true)

Data Structure

Data

• All charts require a data prop, which should contain a query result (e.g., data={query_name})

x and y

• All charts in our library today are x-y coordinate charts (AKA Cartesian), meaning they require x and y columns to create the axes and scales for the chart
• y can accept multiple columns, but can only plot on a single axis at this time. Support for multiple y-axes will come in a future release
• We have built-in assumptions to make writing the chart code easier:
  • If you don't supply x, the first column in the dataset is assumed to be x
  • If you don't supply y, any numerical columns that you have not already assigned to the chart are assumed to be y

Multiple Series

• To plot multiple series (or groups) on your chart, you can do one of the following:
  • Include a series column, which contains category or group names (e.g, series=country)
  • Include multiple y columns - each column will be treated as an individual series (e.g., y={["y1", "y2"]})
  • Both - when both a series column and multiple y columns are used, Evidence will create a series for each combination of series and y
• Multiple y columns must be passed in as an array. Because arrays are not a native markdown feature, they must be wrapped in curly braces so Evidence knows to evaluate it as an object instead of a string
  • The easiest way to plot multiple y columns is to structure your query in a way that leaves all remaining columns as y. For example, if your dataset has 3 columns - x, y1, and y2 - you can leave out an explicit y assignment. Evidence will take the first column as x, then will look for any other numerical columns, including them as y

Ways to Build Charts

Composable Charts

A composable chart consists of a <Chart> component and primitives, which are individual elements you can apply to your chart.

Available Primitives

• Line
• Area
• Bar
• Scatter
• Bubble
• Hist

This structure lets you build simple charts...

<Chart data={query_name} x=date y=sales>
    <Line/>
</Chart>

...or more complex charts with multiple series types:

<Chart data={query_name} x=date>
    <Bar y=sales/>
    <Line y=gross_profit/>
</Chart>

Composable charts manage prop conflicts and allow for prop overrides. Props can be defined in both the <Chart> component and primitive components, and Evidence will use whichever prop is scoped more specifically. For example, in the code below, the line will plot gross_profit instead of sales:

<Chart data={financial_results} x=month y=sales>
    <Line y=gross_profit/>
</Chart>

In the event of a prop conflict, Evidence will use whichever primitive is listed last in the <Chart> component.

Quick Charts

The easiest way to build a chart in Evidence is by using Quick Charts. Quick Charts are template charts that build a composable chart for you behind-the-scenes.

For example, instead of writing this...

<Chart data={query_name} x=date y=sales>
    <Line/>
</Chart>

...you can write this...

<LineChart data={query_name} x=date y=sales/>

...and if your query columns are organized as described in the data section above, you can simplify it to this:

<LineChart data={query_name}/>

Available Quick Charts

• LineChart
• AreaChart
• BarChart
• ScatterPlot
• BubbleChart
• Histogram

Interactive Features

Tooltips

When you have many series on a chart, tooltips automatically sort to show the largest series

Series Focus

Legend Scroll