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I'm currently writing a JavaScript library. It is a project for school were I need to make it easier to visualize data from Yahoo Pipes. The data format is a JSON string, which can contain anything, but mostly contains a list of items, with different attributes for each item.
This approach is quite general and now I was wondering which functionality I could insert into this library. Also how I can deal with this general flow of data to make a usable library for all kinds of data.. The data from Yahoo Pipes can be news items (title, description, postdate, images, links,..) Yahoo Pipes also has functionality for parsing CSV files, so "data tables" are also possible.
Also I was thinking about the structure of the library, what the best way is to implement it. In general the library needs to load in the data from the pipe (JSON string) and pass it to a visualization library like Google Chart or D3.js (formerly Protovis)
I would consider my Javascript skill level as 'Rookie' :)

Thanks for the replies, any advice is welcome!

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Once you have some ideas post further questions (with code) on Stack Overflow. –  ChrisF Jul 21 '11 at 19:08

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

If your JavaScript skill level is Rookie, my first few suggestions to you are as follows:

1) Download and learn to use a good JavaScript library such as jQuery.

2) Download and use Douglas Crockford's JSON library

3) Visit Douglas Crockford's web site and view his YUI JavaScript videos. They are a series of 5 and about 1.5 hours each. However, Crockford is a great presenter and they go fast. See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5969549/features-of-javascript-that-c-developers-fail-to-take-advantage-of

If you watch the videos in (3), you will learn about the advantages and limitations of JavaScript and get a good grasp of why (1) and (2) are so beneficial. Do not fall into the trap of thinking of JavaScript like it's Java or C because of the similar syntax.

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Thanks for the reply. I'm going to take a look at the videos. –  denniswennen Aug 2 '11 at 7:24

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