Although Spotfire offers many different visualization types, you might miss a certain way to visualize your data. To fill that gap, Spotfire provides a framework making it possible for a developer to extend Spotfire with new customized visualizations. Through the provided Spotfire Mod API, these customized visualizations can be created using JavaScript or TypeScript, and they are called visualization mods.
The area chart below is an example of a visualization mod that has been created using this framework.
You can think of a visualization mod as a visualization, whose appearance is specified by the mod developer who created the visualization mod, but still all data related functionality is handled in the same way as in any of the native Spotfire visualizations.
An end user feels that the visualization mod is integrated with Spotfire, because the visualization responds to interactions in the same way as native visualizations do. For example, it is possible to drag a visualization mod to the visualization canvas, and change what is selected on the various visualization axes. Moreover, filtering of the data works as usual across all visualizations, no matter if they are native visualizations or visualization mods. An end user might not even notice there is a difference.
The visualization mods can be based on any of the data sources supported by Spotfire; in-memory data, in-database data, streaming data, and data-on-demand.
A visualization mod in Spotfire can be made accessible to other users in various ways. It can be
saved to the Spotfire library.
Once saved to the library, the visualization mod can be added to analyses
and also pinned to the visualization flyout.
Users with the right permissions can browse and search the library
for visualization mods.
saved as a file to disk (as
a .mod file).
The saved files can then be shared on public websites such as the TIBCO
Community, or attached to emails.
embedded in a Spotfire analysis.
The analysis can then be saved to the library, or saved as a local
file.
A developer of a visualization mod needs a running instance of a Spotfire client, and a source code editor. Examples of visualization mods, which can serve as starting points for developers, are available for download. The examples are built using the Visual Studio Code editor. Via a development server, Spotfire can be connected to the visualization mod in the editor to get a live preview of the mod within the Spotfire client while developing.
For more information about the actual development and the tools, see Getting Started.
By default, if a visualization mod is resaved to the Spotfire library, all instances of the visualization mod are updated in all analyses where it is used.