CanvasXpress Documentation
Your comprehensive guide to mastering CanvasXpress for interactive scientific data visualization.
Welcome to the Documentation
This documentation is your central resource for everything related to the CanvasXpress library. Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced developer, this guide provides the information you need to create powerful, interactive, and reproducible visualizations.
The sections below provide structured pathways to help you quickly find what you're looking for.
Getting Started
Quick Start Tutorial
Create your first visualization in minutes with this simple tutorial.
View Tutorial →Arguments Overview
Understand the key arguments for creating a new CanvasXpress visualization.
View Arguments →Data Formats
An essential guide to all supported data structures, including JSON, CSV, and XML.
View Formats →Authenticated Data Sources
Chart private databases and per-user Google Sheets with the canvasxpress-connectors package — credentials stay on your server.
View Guide →Loading Remote Data
Loading remote data into CanvasXpress is straightforward. This section covers the various data formats you can use.
View Guide →Initialization
Initializing CanvasXpress with json, png, and html tables. This section provides examples and best practices.
View Methods →Core Concepts & Principles
Design Principles
Understand the philosophy behind CanvasXpress, including its focus on **performance** and **reproducibility**.
View Principles →Interactive Features
Learn about the built-in interactive capabilities like zooming, panning, and context menus.
View Features →Audit Trail
A deep dive into the **audit trail** feature, which ensures that your visualizations are fully reproducible.
View Documentation →API Reference
Configuration Parameters
A comprehensive list of all configuration parameters, their types, options, and default values.
View Parameters →Graph Types
A complete index of all supported **graph types**, categorized for easy reference.
View All Graph Types →Methods & Events
An overview of the CanvasXpress API methods and events for programmatic control.
View API Reference →Feature Guides
Data Wrangling
Learn how to use built-in parameters for grouping, faceting, transforming, and pivoting your data.
View Guide →Broadcasting & Cross-Talk
A guide to linking multiple visualizations on a page for interactive data exploration.
View Guide →Highlighting & Selecting
Focus attention on the data that matters — emphasize, ghost, or grey-out the rest with highlightMode, selectionMode and highlightBy.
View Guide →Forecasting
Project a time series forward with a prediction interval — exponential smoothing (SES, Holt, Holt-Winters) with showForecast, per group or on date axes.
View Guide →Editorial Chart Types
Parliament (seat hemicycle) charts, election half-donuts, before-to-after arrow plots, range plots, small multiples, and classed choropleths (natural breaks) with region labels and bubble maps.
View Guide →Annotations
Editorial callouts with straight or curved arrows to data points (drag to place), free text notes, and direct end-of-line series labels that replace the legend.
View Guide →Chart Footer
Publication attribution drawn on the chart — notes, a linked data source, byline and a "Get the data" CSV download — kept in every PNG/SVG/PDF export.
View Guide →Number Formats
Locale-aware numbers on every surface — axis ticks, tooltips, legends and data labels — with numberFormat presets (comma, percent, dollar, compact), sprintf, or a full locale/currency spec.
View Guide →UI Styles
Restyle every widget around a chart — toolbar, menus, Customizer, data table and filters — with the theme (looks) and dataUIStyle (frame density), in light and dark.
View Guide →Accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA conformance — a screen-reader text alternative and data table, full keyboard navigation of data points and menus, a high-contrast theme and reduced-motion support, with a VPAT-style report.
View Guide →Themes & Color Schemes
Restyle every non-data element at once with a named theme (setTheme / the theme config), and pick a data palette with colorScheme (ColorBrewer) or your own colors.
View Guide →Decorations & Reference Lines
Draw threshold and reference lines, shaded ranges, markers, fitted trend lines and on-chart text with the decorations config — kept in every image export.
View Guide →Statistical Fits & Clustering
Add a regression or LOESS fit with a confidence band (showRegressionFit, showLoessFit), and cluster heatmap rows and columns with a choice of distance and linkage or k-means.
View Guide →Exporting & Saving
Save any chart as PNG, SVG, PDF or JSON, print it, or pull the data back out — from the right-click menu or the API. Exports keep titles, legends, decorations and the footer.
View Guide →Live Streaming
Charts that follow data as it arrives — pushData appends readings and keeps a rolling window; dashboards subscribe panels to live streams without code.
View Guide →Grid Layouts & Views
Create and customize interactive data grids with flexible styling options for tables, borders, and cells.
View Guide →LLM & AI Integration
A comprehensive guide to integrating CanvasXpress with LLMs for AI-powered visualization.
View Guide →Commercial Licensing
Documentation on licensing terms for proprietary and business use cases.
View Documentation →Community & Support
Troubleshooting & FAQ
Find solutions to common issues and answers to frequently asked questions.
View Section →GitHub Repository
Visit our GitHub page to report bugs, request features, or contribute to the project.
View Repository →