View

Overview

In G2, a View is the core component unit of charts, used to host and organize multiple marks, and to uniformly manage data, coordinate systems, interactions, styles, etc. Each view has independent data, coordinate system, and interaction configurations, and serves as the smallest unit for applying interactions and styles. Through proper view decomposition, complex visualization layouts such as multi-layer, faceted, and nested compositions can be achieved.

Views not only support flexible data and encoding configurations but can also inherit and override configurations passed from parent levels (such as composite views, facets, etc.), enabling flexible composition and reuse.

Use Cases

• Basic rendering of single charts (such as bar charts, line charts, etc.)
• Multi-layer overlay (such as bar chart + line chart, scatter plot + heatmap, etc.)
• Complex layouts like facets, small multiples, dashboards
• Independent management of local interactions, local styles, and local data
• Zoned application of advanced features like themes, animations, and states

Configuration Options

Views support rich configuration options covering data, encoding, coordinates, styles, interactions, and other aspects. The configuration options are essentially the same as the top-level Chart, commonly used as follows:

Notes:

• Configurations like data, encode, scale, axis, legend, transform, coordinate, interaction set at the view level will automatically apply to all children (marks), and can be individually overridden at the mark level.
• Others like style, tooltip only apply to the current view.
• children can only contain marks, not nested views. For multi-view composition, use top-level containers (such as spaceFlex, spaceLayer, facet, etc.).

Complete configuration example:

({
  type: 'view',
  data: [
    { type: 'A', value: 30 },
    { type: 'B', value: 50 },
    { type: 'C', value: 20 },
  ],
  encode: { x: 'type', y: 'value' },
  scale: { y: { nice: true } },
  coordinate: { type: 'rect' },
  style: { viewFill: '#f5f5f5' },
  axis: { y: { grid: true } },
  legend: { color: { position: 'top' } },
  tooltip: {
    title: { field: 'type' },
    items: [{ field: 'value' }],
  },
  interaction: { elementHighlight: true },
  theme: { color: ['#5B8FF9', '#5AD8A6', '#5D7092'] },
  children: [
    { type: 'interval' },
    { type: 'line', style: { stroke: '#faad14' } },
  ],
});

Configuration Methods

1. Declarative Configuration

Directly declare views and their child marks in options:

({
  type: 'view',
  data: [...],
  encode: {...},
  children: [
    { type: 'interval', encode: {...} }, // ✅ Correct: use mark
    { type: 'line', encode: {...} },     // ✅ Correct: use mark
    // { type: 'view', ... },            // ❌ Error: nested view not supported
  ],
});

2. Configure a chart with Spec

Configure views and marks with Spec:

const chart = new G2.Chart();

chart.options({
  type: 'view',
  children: [
    { type: 'interval', encode: { x: 'type', y: 'value' } },
    { type: 'line', encode: { x: 'type', y: 'value' } },
  ],
});
chart.render();

3. Composite Views and Facets

Views can serve as child nodes of composite nodes (such as facets, spatial layouts). Note: Multi-view composition should use composite containers, not nested views in view’s children.

// ✅ Correct: use facet to compose multiple views
chart.options({
  type: 'facetRect',
  children: [
    {
      type: 'interval',
      encode: { x: 'type', y: 'value' },
    },
    {
      type: 'line',
      encode: { x: 'type', y: 'value' },
    },
  ],
});

// ✅ Correct: use spaceFlex to compose multiple views
chart.options({
  type: 'spaceFlex',
  children: [
    {
      type: 'interval',
      encode: { x: 'type', y: 'value' },
    },
    {
      type: 'line',
      encode: { x: 'date', y: 'sales' },
    },
  ],
});

// ❌ Error: do not nest view in view's children
// chart.options({
//   type: 'view',
//   children: [
//     { type: 'view', ... }, // Will throw error: Unknown Component: mark.view
//   ]
// });

Views and Styles

Views support setting styles for their own area (such as background color, borders, etc.) and can provide unified style management for child marks. For details, see Style.

({
  type: 'interval',
  viewStyle: {
    viewFill: '#e6f7ff',
    plotFill: '#fffbe6',
    mainFill: '#fff',
    contentFill: '#f0f5ff',
  },
  style: { fill: '#5B8FF9' },
});