Extending Spotfire
Spotfire is highly extendable and customizable. The Spotfire environment contains a variety of options to extend the core functionality with custom components, you can customize and automate your Spotfire analyses or even embed Spotfire visualizations into other web applications.
Learn more on the Spotfire community, under Extending Spotfire.
You can extend Spotfire yourself using Spotfire publicly published APIs, download extensions from the component exchange or one of our partners marketplaces, or engage a Spotfire partner to create it for you.
There are some ways to add functionality to an analysis which are easier than creating actual custom extensions.
Spotfire mods
The Spotfire environment allows you to enhance the base functionality with your own custom visualizations, or scripts that can perform different actions. The mods framework allows you to develop and debug the mods within the context of a Spotfire analysis, and includes the important functionality to sign and trust the custom code out of the box.
See Developing mods for more information.
Data functions
A business author might have access to data functions that have been created by a script author using Spotfire Analyst and saved in the Spotfire library. These data functions can be used to add more advanced calculations and use scripts based on different programming languages in the analysis.
Data functions can be used for various purposes like opening data, performing a transformation, or performing calculations like adding clustering or other statistical methods. There are a number of data functions available on the Spotfire Exchange page on the Spotfire Community.
See Data functions and the f(x) flyout for more information.
Actions and scripts
Actions is a Spotfire concept that offers a wide range of possibilities to perform tasks from within an analysis, including the possibility to run scripts, and they can also include tasks that affect external systems. The actions can be added to text areas and visualizations, and they are initiated using various controls or triggers.
See Adding an action trigger to a visualization, Adding actions to a text area, Adding actions performed when clicking on visualization items and Adding a new external action to an analysis for more information.
- Developing mods
The Spotfire environment allows you to enhance the base functionality with your own custom visualizations, or scripts that can perform different actions. To provide a secure development and usage environment, the mods framework has been created. - Actions
Actions is a Spotfire concept that offers a wide range of possibilities to perform tasks from within an analysis, and can also include tasks that affect external systems. The actions can be added to text areas and visualizations, and they are initiated using various controls or triggers. For example, you can create actions that control the workflow through an analysis, run scripts, or let people send data externally. That is, the contents of the actions can differ a lot, and in addition, the way they are added differs depending on the context. - Data functions and the f(x) flyout
In addition to the possibility to add your own calculated columns or custom expressions to an analysis, a business author might also have access to data functions that have been created by a script author using Spotfire Analyst and saved in Spotfire library. These data functions can be used to add more advanced calculations and use scripts based on different programming languages in the analysis. - Usage of scripts and data functions
Various scripts like IronPython scripts, JavaScripts, or scripts written in custom query languages to be executed in external databases can be part of an analysis. Addition of data functions is another way to enable scripting in Spotfire. - Manage trust
Many Spotfire users want to extend the Spotfire environment in different ways. When allowing custom code to run within an analysis, or when enabling direct interaction with other systems, it is important to consider security. Any custom item created by a malevolent person could potentially perform unexpected or undesired actions. Therefore, Spotfire uses different trust mechanisms to help you to keep your system safe. - Review mod
A visualization mod is a visualization that has been developed by someone else than Spotfire, and an action mod contains one or more scripts that you can trigger from a visualization or on a property change. You might see the question of whether you trust the mod when trying to add a new visualization or action mod to your analysis. - Review external action
An external action is an action triggered from your Spotfire analysis which can send data to, or interact with, external systems. When you attempt to run an action, you might see the question of whether or not you trust the external action.