observablehq / observablehq/plot

Distinguish select from selectAll

Open
#1,471 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
5.4k
Forks
244
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

The select transform, when you provide a function, is really “selectAll”: it can select multiple elements in each series. Whereas all the built-in named selectors only select a single element. This makes it a little confusing. For example, using a built-in selector, you’d say:

Plot.selectFirst({x: "Date", y: "Close"})

Or equivalently:

Plot.select("first", {x: "Date", y: "Close"})

But if you implemented this as a function with the obvious interpretation, it will crash!

Plot.select((I) => I[0], {x: "Date", y: "Close"}) // 💥

You need to return a single-element array instead:

Plot.select((I) => [I[0]], {x: "Date", y: "Close"})

It’d be nice if we the select transform’s selector expected you to return a single index, and we provided a separate selectAll transform for selecting multiple things (within each series). Then the above would work, and if you want to select multiple values, you can use selectAll:

Plot.selectAll((I) => [I[0], I[I.length - 1]], {x: "Date", y: "Close"})

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the select transform API described in the issue and compare the built-in selectFirst/select behavior with function selectors. Check how selectors are interpreted per series, then verify that single-index select and multi-index selectAll match the examples and intended distinction.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
javascript
Domain
data-visualization
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.