d3.js updating visual

Question

I have a treemap I put together with d3.js. I populate the data via getJSON. It works great. However, I have this functionality in a setInterval method and it doesnt seem to be refreshing itself.

    var treemap = d3.layout.treemap()
.padding(4)
.size([w, h])
.value(function(d) { return d.size; });

var svg = d3.select("#chart").append("svg")
.style("position", "relative")
.style("width", w + "px")
.style("height", h + "px");



function redraw3(json) {
  var cell = svg.data([json]).selectAll("g")
      .data(treemap)
    .enter().append("g")
      .attr("class", "cell")
      .attr("transform", function(d) { return "translate(" + d.x + "," + d.y + ")"; });

  cell.append("rect")
      .attr("width", function(d) { return d.dx; })
      .attr("height", function(d) { return d.dy; })
      .style("fill", function(d) { return d.children ? color(d.data.name) : null; });

  cell.append("text")
      .attr("x", function(d) { return d.dx / 2; })
      .attr("y", function(d) { return d.dy / 2; })
      .attr("dy", ".35em")
      .attr("text-anchor", "middle")
      .text(function(d) { return d.children ? null : d.data.name; });

}



setInterval(function() {
d3.json("http://localhost:8080/dev_tests/d3/examples/data/flare2.json", function(json) {
redraw3(json);
});
}, 3000);

My question specifically, is why when I change data in the json file doesn't it show up 3 seconds later in the treemap?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

What's in the data? Because if the data array has the same length, the enter() selection (which corresponds to previously unbound data) will have a length of zero. Mike Bostock wrote a great tutorial called Thinking with Joins , which I would recommend reading before you go any further.

The svg.data() call seems redundant, and for clarity's sake I'd recommend doing this instead:

var leaves = treemap(json);
console.log("leaves:", leaves); // so you can see what's happening

// cell here is the bound selection, which has 3 parts
var cell = svg.selectAll("g")
  .data(leaves);
// you might want to console.log(cell) here too so you can take a look

// 1. the entering selection is new stuff
var entering = cell.enter()
  .append("g")
entering.append("rect")
  // [update rectangles]
entering.append("text")
  // [update text]

// 2. the exiting selection is old stuff
cell.exit().remove();

// 3. everything else is the "updating" selection
cell.select("rect")
  // [update rectangles]
cell.select("text")
  // [update text]

You can also encapsulate the updating of cells in a function and "call" it on both the entering and updating selections, so you don't have to write the same code twice:

function update() {
  cell.select("rect")
    // [update rectangles]
  cell.select("text")
    // [update text]
}

entering.append("rect");
entering.append("text");
entering.call(update);

cell.call(update);