Visualization mod development

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.

How does a visualization mod work?

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. The 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.

Sharing visualization mods with others

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 can browse and search the library for visualization mods.
embedded in an analysis.
The analysis can then be saved to the library, or saved as a local file.

Developing visualization mods

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 point for developers, are available for download from Spotfire Mods on GitHub. The examples to download are built using the Visual Studio Code editor. When using Visual Studio Code as editor, it is possible 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.

Version handling

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.