Table Item

Parent Previous Next

Data Item: Table

This data item contains a 2D array of elements arranged as rows and columns.  These elements can be single or double precision floating point values or fixed length strings.

Display options

The table item can be displayed as a physical table as text with optional column sorting or as an interactive plot.  In plot mode, line, bar, scatter and pie charts are all supported. The value of the 'plot' property controls the specific type of display that will be generated. There are a number of properties supported for all tables: labels, titles, formatting, etc, documented in the table at the end of this section.

A table data item displayed as a table might look like this:


Tables have optional row and column headers that are presented as bold-face labels along the top and left sides of the table. Each table has an optional title that is displayed, centered, over the top of the table. Columns support sorting and clicking on individual columns will sort the rows according to the order of the values in that column. Values in the table can be strings or floating point numbers.  The 'format' property sets the default formatting for the entire table or for individual columns. Of special note, a table value can be interpreted as a time value (the number of seconds since 1970-01-01T00.00:00.00000).  In conjunction with the 'date_XY' formatting option, these can be displayed in proper date/time formats. 

The various chart formats (for the same data) look like the following:

In line plot mode, rows in the table are mapped to lines in the line plot. A specific row or the column labels can be used as the common X axis for the data in each row. NaN values in the row are not included in any plots (they are simply skipped). Line colors, widths, styles, thicknesses and symbols can all be controlled via properties.  A line plot with symbols but with the 'line_style' of none results in a scatter plot.

In bar plot mode, rows in the table are mapped to sets of bars in the bar plot. A specific row or the column labels can be used as the common X axis for the data in each row. NaN values in the row are not included in any plots (they are simply skipped).  Bar plots map the 'line_color' property to the color of each bar set.  


In pie chart mode, each row is displayed as a separate pie graph with a common legend. The colors of the pie wedges can be set using the 'line_color' property. The row label and the specific wedge value can be seen when the mouse points at an individual wedge.

LaTeX Support in Plots

Most table properties that support text for display (e.g. plot_title, ytitle, etc) also support the use of LaTeX styling for the creation of math formulas.  If the table item is displayed as a table, use the general LaTeX syntax. If the LaTeX is part of a chart (pie, line, bar, etc), the syntax is a little different. The plotter LaTeX syntax is fairly simple, wrap the Latex text with '$' characters.  For example, a plot_title property with the value:


$\alpha_{1c} = 352 \pm 11 \text{ km s}^{-1}$


will be displayed in the plot like this:

Properties

Properties can be scalars or lists. Multiple rows can be used as y values for plot lines in the same plot, selected by the yaxis property. The value of that property can be a row name or the row index into the table (if a number). The xaxis property provides matching row names providing x values for each yaxis row. Other properties can provide values for each y row as well. These can be scalars (used for all nodes of all row lines) or arrays.  If arrays, individual values in the array are used for each y axis line. If the value is simple value, it is used for all nodes in the line (e.g. #ff0000 used as a color). If the value is prefixed with an '@' character, it is interpreted as a row reference. A row reference can be either the index number of a row or the name of a row.  For example when used with line_marker_size: '@0' selects the first row (row at index 0),  '@Temperature' selects the row with the name 'Temperature', while '0' specifies the value 0.0.

Note: for items listed as arrays or scalars, an array may be used to specify a specific value for each instance in a plot or if a single value is specified, it will be used for all instances.  Most such properties specify things like the color of a trace on a chart or the name of the marker to be used with each trace.


Property

Value

item_justification

Controls the justification of tables in reports and detail pages. Overrides report-wide justification. Can be left, center or right. By default, there will be no justification.

align_column

Controls the justification of the text in the columns. Example: [right, left, center]. If the number of columns is less than the number of justifications you have set, the sequence will repeat itself.

format

formatting for values in a table or plot.  It may be an array or a scalar (e.g. scientific  or [scientific, date_00]). Value values include:


str

Format the value as a simple string.

scientific

Use scientific notation for the display of numbers

floatdotX

Display numbers in fixed notation using X digits to the right of the decimal

sigfigsX

Display numbers rounded to X significant figures

date_XY

Format the value as a date. If the value is a number, the value is interpreted as the number of seconds since midnight, Jan 1, 1970.  'X' determines the format for the date, 'Y' determines the format for the time.


X Values:

'_' do not include the date.

0: 2017-01-06

1: Jan 1, 2017

2: 01/06/2017

3: 1 Jan 2017

4: Locale specific date display


Y Values:

'_' do not include the time.

0: 13:20:00

1: 1:20PM

2: 13:20:00.000000

3: Locale specific display of date & time.

4: Locale specific display of time.

height

Height of the chart in pixels

labels_column

An array of strings to use as column labels.  Example: [column A, column B]

labels_row

An array of strings to use as column labels.  Example: [row 1, row 2]

legend_position

If a legend is shown, this property can be used to position the legend relative to the plot. For example, the value: [1.0, 0.5] will place the legends to the right of the plot, centered vertically while [0.0, 0.0] will place it in the lower left corner of the plot.  The numbers are [X,Y] and the domain of the plot is from 0,0 to 1,1. Numbers above and below 0,1 are legal.

line_color

Color of the plot line, set of bars or pie arc segments. For example #ff0000 is red. It may be an array or scalar ([#808080,#ff0000,#00ffff] or #8f4f55) color or an array of row references.  If a row reference is specified, the values in the row are mapper through the palette and palette_range to select the color.

line_error_bars

This property can be set to a single value, an array of values or an array of row references.  A vertical error bar is drawn centered on each marker location. The length of the error bars is selected using this property. 

line_marker

The name of the marker to use. This may be an array or a scalar.  


There are a number of supported markers:

Name

Symbol

none

no marker is drawn

circle

filled circle

square

filled square

cross

filled plus symbol

x

cross rotated 45 degrees

triangle

filled triangle

pentagon

filled pentagon

hexagon

filled hexagon

octagon

filled octagon

star

filled five point star

diamond

square rotated 45 degrees

asterisk

line drawn asterisk (*)

hash

line drawn hash symbol (#)

plus

line drawn plus symbol (+)

times

plus rotated 45 degrees


The suffix -open can be added to specify that a filled marker be drawn only in outline and -dot can be added to specify a dot be drawn in the center of the marker.  The marker specification:  square-open-dot  will result in the outline of a square drawn with a dot in the center.

line_marker_opacity

The opacity of the marker from [0.0, 1.0]. May be an array, scalar or row reference.  The default opacity is 1.0.

line_marker_scale

If the line marker is specified as a row, this property is used to apply a linear transform to the value before it is used as the marker size. It takes the form [M,B] and the transform is: final_size = M*input_size + B. The default is [1.0,0.0].

line_marker_size

The size of the marker in points. May be an array, scalar or row reference.  If a row reference is specified, the values in the row are used as the size of the individual markers after mapping the values through the line_marker_scale transform. 

line_marker_text

If set, the value of this property is used to generate the strings that are displayed at a marker when the mouse hovers over a marker. The string may include multiple macros. An example might be: 

'({{v/x}},{{v/y}}) {{v/rowname}} color={{v/color}} size={{v/size}} error={{v/error}}'  Any property in the current context can be used in the string as well as several properties specific to this specific marker. The specific properties include:

Property

Value

v/x

X value for the marker

v/y

Y value for the marker

v/rowname

Name of the row

v/color

The color value for the marker

v/size

Marker size

v/error

Error bar length

line_style

Selects the dashed line form. May be an array or a scalar.

Name

Line style

none

no line is drawn

solid

solid line

dot

dotted line

dash

short dashed lines

longdash

longer dashed lines

dashdot

mixed short dashes and dots

longdashdot

mixed long dashes and dots

line_width

Width of the plot line in pixels. May be an array or a scalar (e,g.  [1,3,3] or 1)

nan_display

In the table format, the value displayed to represent a NaN value.  The default is 'NaN'.

palette

Set to the name of a palette to use when line_colors is used to select marker colors by values. The valid palette names are: Greys, YlGnBu, Greens, YlOrRd, Bluered, RdBu, Reds, Blues, Picnic, Rainbow, Portland, Jet, Hot, Blackbody, Earth, Electric and Viridis. If a '-' is placed before the name, the palette order will be reversed.

palette_position

If a color palette has been selected and set to be shown, this property can be used to position the center of the palette colorbar relative to the plot. For example, the value: [1.2, 0.5] will place the colorbar to the right of the plot while [-0.2, 0.5] will place it to the left of the plot.  The numbers are [X,Y] and the domain of the plot is from 0,0 to 1,1. Numbers above and below 0,1 are legal.

palette_range

This property is used to set the range of the palette color mapping. It takes the form [min,max].  The color value min will be mapped to the lowest color in the palette and max to the highest color in the palette.

palette_show

This property can have the value 1 or 0.  The colorbar will be added to the plot if the value is 1 and hidden if 0.  If 'palette' is specified, this value will default to 1.

palette_title

This property can be used to display a text title for the colorbar.

plot

Change the display mode for the table item.  Select between the various plots.

Value

Operation

table

display as table

bar

display as a bar chart

line

display as a line chart

pie

display as a pie chart

plot_margins

This property allows for the adjustment of the amount of spacing between the plot border (not including axis tick labels or titles) and the boundaries of its container.  It can be used to provide more space for axis tick labels or to expand the plot to make more effective use of whitespace (e.g. when the legend is hidden).  It takes the form: [{left},{top},{right},{bottom}] where each of the four values is an integer number of pixels to use as the margin along the left, top, right and bottom of the plot respectively.  The value: default can be used to leave a value set to its natural value.  For example, the value: [default,default,5,default] can be used to make the right side of the plot more close follow the right side of the plot container. 

plot_title

The title for the table if displayed as a chart

plot_xaxis_type

linear=linear mapping, log=log mapping for the x axis

plot_yaxis_type

linear=linear mapping, log=log mapping for the y axis

stacked

1=display multiple data values in 'bar' chart mode as stacked bars

show_border

If this property is 1, the plot will have a border drawn around it. If 0, no border is drawn.  The default is 0.

show_legend

If this property is 1, the plot legend will be displayed.  If 0, it is hidden. The default is 1.

show_legend_border

If this property is 1, a border will be drawn around the plot legend.  If 0, it is hidden. The default is 0.

table_cond_format

This property sets the conditional formatting for the cells. See conditional formatting for additional details.

table_page

This property controls the number of rows that are visible in each page of the table. Default is 0, which turns the table pagination off. Any number larger than 1 sets the number of rows for each page. If the property is set to 1, the default value of 10 rows per page is used.

table_pagemenu

This property controls the options displayed in the 'Show' field: how many rows are visible for each page. Example: [10, 100, 500] will display only these three values as options. The default is [10, 25, 50, 100, -1], where -1 stands for "All".

table_scrollx

If this property is 0, there is no horizontal scroll bar for the table. Default is 1, which displays the horizontal scroll bar

table_scrolly

This property controls the vertical scroll bar. The value of this property is the height of the table that will be visible in points (1 point = 1/72 inch). Default is 0, or no scroll bar

table_search

If this property is 1, the Search field will appear to allow user to search inside the table values. The default is 0.

table_sort

This property controls the ability of the able to be interactively sorted. Possible values include:

Value

Operation

none

The table is not sortable.

all

All of the columns (including row labels) are sortable.

data

Only the data columns (not the row labels) are sortable. This is the default.

table_title

Title for the table if displayed as a table

table_bordered

If this property is 0, the table's border will be removed. The default is 1.

table_condensed

If this property is 1, the table's horizontal and vertical height will be minimized making it look compact. The default is 0. If both table_condensed and table_wrap_content are set to 1, condensation is ignored. This is because if you turn on wrapping, the text flows to the next row and it will lose the condensed look when that happens.

table_wrap_content

If this property is 1, it will enable wrapping of content to the next line inside a table cell.  Default is 0. Table headers i.e. column labels and row labels will not wrap because the label/header should determine the wrapping point of the rest of the rows. Only the content in the body of the table will wrap.

table_default_col_labels

Enable/disable default column labels. If set to 0, it disables the addition of default column labels. The default is 1.

title

Title used if plot_title or table_title is not specified

width

Width of the chart in pixels

xaxis

Row number(s) or name(s) to be used as the x axes values for 'line' charts. This can be a single value or an array of row references.

xaxis_format

If set, this formatting string will be used (instead of the one specified by the 'format' property) to format the tick values of the x axis.

xrange

The minimum and maximum values for the x axis. Example: [0.0, 10.0]

xtitle

Title to be used for the chart x axis.

yaxis

Row number(s) or name(s) to be used as the y axes values for charts. This can be a single value or an array of row references.  If no value is specified, all rows not specified in the xaxis property will be used as yaxis rows.

yaxis_format

If set, this formatting string will be used (instead of the one specified by the 'format' property) to format the tick values of the y axis.

yrange

The minimum and maximum values for the y axis. Example: [0.0, 10.0]

ytitle

Title to be used for the chart y axis.

Table Conditional Formatting

The property is a conditional formatting string. The target portion of a rule is based on row and column labels. If those labels are not defined for a table, the row/column index (zero-based) can be used to select the portion of the table the rule applies to. 

Gallery Examples

This section will show in detail how to reproduce the plot and table example from the Nexus gallery.


Plot 1: how to create a plot that shows the air flow profile on top of the Force pressure profile

The first step is to isolate the data items that contain the data point. In the template item filter, enter the conditions to isolate those items. For example:

Once you have isolated the tables, you will need to merge them into a single item. Select in the Template type: Table Merge Generator. Enter in the Configure data item merge... menu to make sure the merging configurations are set to the default ones. Make sure also that in the Generated items you have Replace instead of the default Append. If you now generate your report, you should see something like this:

In this particular example, we are merging three tables. See how we have three times a "Distance" row: this is because each table had "Distance" as the x axis.

Now, it's time to set the properties so that the data will be displayed as plots. As the first thing, we need to isolate which rows to use as x ans y axis. This is done by setting xaxis and yaxis to the corresponding row indices - in this case, [0,4] and [1,5]. In this way, the first plot will be the air flow profile, the second the Force pressure profile. As a next step, we need to improve the visualization of the plots. We want the air flow profile to have only line and no dots in between the data points, and to be thicker than the normal plot. To achieve this, set the following properties:

line_color = [black, red]

plot = line

line_marker = [none, circle]

line_width = [3,1]


Now the plots are displayed as expected. You can still improve the visualization by setting the position of the legend so that it doesn't overlap your plots, setting the axis labels:

legend_position = [0.1, 0.95]

show_legend = 1

show_legend_border = 1

xtitle = Distance [m]

ytitle = Force Pressure [N]


This is the complete set of properties used to generate the gallery plot:


Plot 2: how to use size and color of points to display multiple variables

The goal of plot 2 is to display multiple variables in one single 2D visualization. The plot shows Work vs. Inflow mass, with each data point sized by the ratio of chemicals and colored according to a Temperature palette. Therefore, a total of three variables are displayed against the Inflow mass.

To obtain such visualization, the first step is to isolate the table that contains all these four parameters. Let's assume your table looks like this:

The first thing that we need to do is transpose the table so that a row corresponds to each variable (instead of a column). So, set the template type to be Table Merge Generator. In the configuration dialog, set the Merging to be Columns instead of the default Rows, and the toggle on the Transpose results:

Now that we have prepared the data in the correct way, it's time to set the plot attributes. Let's open the properties editor. As a first step, the basic: set the plot, the X and Y values, and make all the data into single dots:

plot = line

xaxis = 0

xaxis_format = floatdot4

yaxis = Work [Nm]

yaxis_format = floatdot0

line_style = [none]


Next, let's use the information from Temperature to color the dots by:

line_color = @3

palette = -hot

palette_range = [2500, 3200]

palette_show = 1

palette_title = Temp [K]


And now let's use the information from Ratio to set the size of the data points:

line_marker_size = @Ratio

line_marker_scale = [450, -90.0]


We can set a text to appear when we hover over each data point, to show its values:

line_marker_text = Ratio: {{v/size}} Temperature: {{v/color}} [K]


The complete list of properties set for generating this plot is the following:


Plot 3: how to display multiple queries with error bars on the same plot

Plot 3 shows how to display multiple queries on the same plot, and also how to add error bar visualization on a query. As always, the first step is to isolate the item(s) that contain the information needed for the plot. In this case, it is a single table that looks like this:

We therefore need to transpose it, so that each variable corresponds to a row. To do so, set the template type to be Table Merge Generator. In the configuration dialog, set the Merging to be Columns instead of the default Rows, and the toggle on the Transpose results:

Next step, let's set the three queries with different visualization property for each line, so to distinguish them better:

plot = line

xaxis = [0]

yaxis = [5,6,1]

line_marker = [circle, square, diamond]

line_size = [10, 10, 10]

line_style = [solid, dot, dash]


Let's add the error bar on each of the query. This is done by simply setting one property:

line_error_bars = [@2, @3, @4]


The gallery plot is generated with the following properties:


Plot 4: how to display two bar plots at the same time

Plot 4 displays two bar plots with the same X axis. First step, as always, is to isolate the item(s) that contain the data. In this particular case, these is how the items appear:

We have three sets of queries in three different items. We need to merge them into a single item. To do so, set the template type to be Table Merge Generator, and let the configuration be the default. Then, let's set the plot properties:

plot = bar

xaxis = 0

yaxis = [1,3]


Because of the particular values of the y axis in this case, we also want to turn on the log scale on the y direction only:

plot_yaxis_type = log


This will set the two bar plots to be against the same x axis. The complete list of properties to reproduce the example of the gallery is here:


Plot 5: how to display a pie plot

The first step to display a pie plot is to isolate the table element that contains the data. Here is how it looks like:

Note how the values are all in one single row, and how there is only one value for each column. Now, let's plot this as a pie chart by setting the following property:

plot = pie


That is all that is needed. If you want to reproduce exactly the chart in the gallery, these are the complete settings: