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Hi,

Here in my work we have a huge need for new visualizations like timeline, treemap, pictorial charts and others. Since I hadn’t been able to catch up with Redash development, I’ve been trying different approaches like:

  • charts built with URLs: like old-school Google Charts, QuickChart,io or image-charts;

  • experimenting with all HTML elements possible in Redash Table Visualization;

  • trying to hack into Redash (import additional JS and CSS files on the server app so I could build queries and visualizations that use external charting libraries like the new Google Charts)

The first approach worked but unfortunately the charts are images and have no interactivity, which is not the best UX.

On the second approach I’d found out some neat possibilities, but couldn’t go on with my intent of building real-life charts based on tables (I know it sounds crazy).

So I’m trying the third one, injecting JS with Requestly, a Chrome extension. I’m trying to emulate a future hack on Redash, importing additional JS files from libraries like React Google Charts.

I know it’s somewhat strange/cumbersome using two libraries (the built-in plot.ly and an external one) on Redash but I couldn’t think about anything else. I’ve already tried to use iframes, HTML maps or embed Javascript in queries and nothing worked…

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Arnaldo

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Redash is tied to plotly.js at the moment. But as Arik wrote on this forum post:

The end goal is to have a plugin based visualization system, so you can add visualizations without changing your Redash deployment. Until then, you can add new visualization by extending the current code base.

Eventually, we’d like to make Redash play nice with other chart libraries like Highcharts, Google Charts, or ChartJS.

For now, have you considered adding visualizations to the code base itself? It sounds like you’re pretty comfortable with javascript so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you. The only major change since Arik’s post is that we’re migrating from Angular to React. We even have a developer guide to help you get started.

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