Directly render and serve d3 visualizations from a nodejs server.

d3-server.js

// Start `node d3-server.js`
// Then visit http://localhost:1337/
//
var d3   = require('d3'),
    http = require('http')

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  // Chrome automatically sends a requests for favicons
  // Looks like https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=39402 isn't
  // fixed or this is a regression.
  if(req.url.indexOf('favicon.ico') != -1) {
    res.statusCode = 404
    return
  }

  var pad     = { t: 10, r: 10, b: 50, l: 40 },
      width   = 800 - pad.l - pad.r,
      height  = 500 - pad.t - pad.b,
      samples = d3.range(10).map(d3.random.normal(10, 5)),
      x       = d3.scale.linear().domain([0, samples.length - 1]).range([0, width]),
      y       = d3.scale.linear().domain([0, d3.max(samples)]).range([height, 0]),
      xAxis   = d3.svg.axis().scale(x).orient('bottom').tickSize(height),
      yAxis   = d3.svg.axis().scale(y).orient('left')

  var line = d3.svg.line()
    .interpolate('basis')
    .x(function(d, i) { return x(i) })
    .y(y)

  var vis = d3.select('body').html('').append('svg')
    .attr('xmlns', 'http://www.w3.org/2000/svg')
    .attr('xmlns:xlink', 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink')
    .attr('width', width + pad.l + pad.r)
    .attr('height', height + pad.t + pad.b)
  .append('g')
    .attr('transform', 'translate(' + pad.l + ',' + pad.t + ')')

  vis.append('g')
    .attr('class', 'x axis')
    .call(xAxis)

  vis.append('g')
    .attr('class', 'y axis')
    .call(yAxis)

  vis.selectAll('.axis text')
    .style('fill', '#888')
    .style('font-family', 'Helvetica Neue')
    .style('font-size', 11)

  vis.selectAll('.axis line')
    .style('stroke', '#eee')
    .style('stroke-width', 1)

  vis.selectAll('.domain')
    .style('display', 'none')

  vis.selectAll('path.samples')
    .data([samples])
  .enter().append('path')
    .attr('class', 'samples')
    .attr('d', line)
    .style('fill', 'none')
    .style('stroke', '#c00')
    .style('stroke-width', 2)

  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'image/svg+xml'})
  res.end(d3.select('body').node().innerHTML)
}).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1')

console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

Maybe i miss something, but in my tests, the problem is :
on server side, there is no DOM. so d3.selection cannot find objects.

I still don't know the trick to use d3 in server side.

here you can find an implementation of this example that works https://github.com/Objectway/d3-server-renderer

This simple project works using d3 and node.js, and it will render to png image:https://github.com/ubear/hegel

hi, i got it to work with jsdom: https://gist.github.com/dotob/37b80cbbd9f0e1f135db (sorry its coffeescript now...)

Here's a vanilla-JS implementation using jsdom (which is the first of all of the possible methods that I've actually gotten to work).

Try using D3-Node

You can try nivo, it's a set of d3 powered React components, it doesn't use d3 for DOM manipulation, so it's easy to render it on the server side without using jsdom or headless browser rendering, it also provide an http API.

For now those libraries are under heavy development.

An example of a pack layout

Hi... I wrote an updated version of this example because it is not working. However, I have to manually set the closing svg tag because I do not know how to add the path inside the body of the svg. Could somebody check at that please?