A d3 based timeline visualization.

• NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/d3-milestones
• Github: https://github.com/walterra/d3-milestones
• Storybook demos: https://walterra.github.io/d3-milestones

If you're using d3-milestones out in the wild I'd love to see what you came up with, just ping me on twitter.com/walterra.

yarn add d3-milestones.

The most quick way to get going is to use unpkg.com as a CDN to include the library directly into your HTML file.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/d3-milestones/build/d3-milestones.css">
<script src="https://unpkg.com/d3-milestones/build/d3-milestones.min.js"></script>

<div id="timeline"></div>

<script>
  milestones('#timeline')
    .mapping({
      'timestamp': 'year',
      'text': 'title'
    })
    .parseTime('%Y')
    .aggregateBy('year')
    .render([
      { year: 789, title: 'Vikings begin attacks on England.' },
      { year: 840, title: 'Vikings found Dublin in Ireland.' }
      ...
      { year: 1050, title: 'The city of Oslo is founded in Norway.' },
      { year: 1066, title: 'Battle of Hastings.' }
    ]);
</script>

Head over here to see this example in action: https://beta.observablehq.com/@walterra/vikings-timeline.

Examples are included using storybook:

• Vikings Timeline
• Windows/macOS Timeline

To initialize d3-milestones, pass a DOM Id to its main factory:

  const vis = milestones('#wrapper');

The returned object exposes the following API:

# vis.aggregateBy(interval)

Sets the aggregation interval for the event data, where interval can be one of second, minute, hour, day, week, month, quarter or year.

# vis.distribution(string)

Sets the label distribution, can be top-bottom, top or bottom. Defaults to top-bottom. The options don't change for vertical layouts. top refers to labels on the left and bottom to labels on the right for that layout.

# vis.mapping(configObject)

Sets overrides for the default attributes for the expected data structure of an event. This defaults to:

  {
    category: undefined,
    entries: undefined,
    timestamp: 'timestamp',
    text: 'text',
    url: 'url'
  };

The method allows you to override single or multiple attributes to map them to fields in your original data with a single call like:

    vis.mapping({
      'timestamp': 'year',
      'text': 'title'
    })

# vis.optimize(boolean)

Enables/Disables the label optimizer. When enabled, the optimizer attempts to avoid label overlap by vertically displacing labels.

# vis.autoResize(boolean)

Enables/Disables auto resizing. Enabled by default, this adds listeners to resizing events of the browser window.

# vis.orientation(string)

Sets the orientation of the timeline, can be either horizontal or vertical. Defaults to horizontal.

# vis.parseTime(specifier)

Specifies the formatter for the timestamp field. The specifier string is expected to resemble a format described here: https://github.com/d3/d3-time-format#locale_format

# vis.labelFormat(specifier)

The labelFormat for the time label for each milestones defaults to '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M'. Using aggregateBy, labelFormat will be set automatically to a reasonable format corresponding to the aggregation level. Still, this method is available to override this behavior with a custom labelFormat.

# vis.urlTarget(string)

Customizes the target attribute when labels are provided with a URL. Can be _blank, _self, _parent or _top.

# vis.useLabels(boolean)

Enables/Disables the display of labels.

# vis.render([data])

When called without data this triggers re-rendering the existing visualization.

data is expected to be an array of event objects with fields matching either the expected defaults (timestamp and text attribute) or the provided mapping via .mapping().

# vis.onEventClick(function)

Set a callback which is executed when the text or image is clicked.

  vis.onEventClick((d) => {
    console.log('click', d);
    alert(`
      ${d.text} | ${d.timestamp}
      ${JSON.stringify(d.attributes)}
    `);
  })

# vis.onEventMouseOver(function)

Set a callback which is executed when the mouse cursor is over text or image.

  vis.onEventMouseOver((d) => {
    console.log('mouseover', d);
  })

# vis.onEventMouseLeave(function)

Set a callback which is executed when the mouse cursor is leaving text or image.

  vis.onEventMouseLeave((d) => {
    console.log('mouseleave', d);
  })

This repository uses Elastic APM to track performance of functional tests. It uses @elastic/apm-rum as a devDependency to be run only as part of the tests. No telemetry library is part of the published package.

d3-milestones is also available as a visualization plugin for Kibana here: https://github.com/walterra/kibana-milestones-vis