ColorEx Library

ColorEx is a data visualization and summarization library that uses color creatively to represent data, make visualization interactive, and ultimately be a great tool for learning patterns in data. It is meant to be simple, easy, and straight-forward.

Features

• Supports CSV data files for input.
• Generates and outputs color grid in HTML format.
• Themes supported both in-built and user-defined.
• Templates supported both in-built and user-defined.

Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• Cheetah

Installation

Install using pip (recommended)

To begin using the ColorEx library, we first install it using pip.

(NOTE: You'll need an Internet connection for this one!)

$ pip install colorexlib

Let's Get Started

Your first program!

Let's get started with your first python program using the ColorEx library.

1. Create a new directory on your computer.
2. Copy and paste the following code into a new file and save it as first_colorex.py, in in your directory.

# import modules 
from colorexlib.colorex import ColorExGrid

# set tile grid options
options = dict()
options['source'] = ['attendance.csv', 'csv']
options['title'] = 'Student Attendance'
options['subtitle'] = 'Attendance of students per month in 2018'
options['theme'] = 'sun.cxt'

# create ColorEx object, passing options.
colorex_grid = ColorExGrid(options)

# create color grid in HTML
colorex_grid.to_html('attendance.html','template.html')

3. In this repository, download the files attendance.csv and template.html in the first_examples directory and move them into the directory you created in step (1).

4. Now you should have three files (3) in the same directory:

   1. first_colorex.py,
   2. attendance.csv and
   3. template.html.

   Let's carry on!

5. Now open and run your python script first_colorex.py.

6. If all things go smoothly, a new HTML file called attendance.html will be created in the same directory.

7. Open this new HTML file, and you will see a color grid quite similar to the one shown below:

Yayyy! So you've completed your first ever ColorEx script. Pretty simple right?!

Examples

One of the best ways of learning how to use ColorEx is by looking at and studying a couple of examples. We've got you covered in this area. In this repo, navigate to the examples directory. You will notice a few examples that will help you achieve a solid understanding of how things work, along with the required CSV data files, templates, and theme files too.

Contributing

We value contributions from anyone, especially you! There is always something to be tested, fixed, developed, and documented here. If you're ever interested, please see Contributing to learn how you can get started helping us to develop and improve ColorEx!

License

This project is licensed under MIT License.

See License for more information.