perspectiveR

R htmlwidgets binding for the FINOS Perspective library – a high-performance WebAssembly-powered data visualization engine with interactive pivot tables and multiple chart types.

Installation

# Install from GitHub
remotes::install_github("EydlinIlya/perspectiveR")

# Or using pak
pak::pak("EydlinIlya/perspectiveR")

# Or using devtools
devtools::install_github("EydlinIlya/perspectiveR")

Quick Start

library(perspectiveR)

# Interactive data grid with full self-service UI
perspective(mtcars)

# Bar chart grouped by cylinder count
perspective(mtcars, group_by = "cyl", plugin = "Y Bar")

# Filtered scatter plot
perspective(iris,
  columns = c("Sepal.Length", "Sepal.Width", "Species"),
  filter = list(c("Species", "==", "setosa")),
  plugin = "Y Scatter"
)

Features

• Multiple visualization types: Datagrid, bar, line, area, scatter, heatmap, treemap, sunburst, and more
• Self-service interactive UI: Drag-and-drop columns, switch chart types, add filters/sorts/pivots, create computed expressions
• High performance: WebAssembly-powered compute engine runs entirely in the browser
• Shiny integration: Output/render bindings plus proxy interface for streaming data updates, indexed/keyed tables, rolling-window tables (limit), data export, table metadata queries, and state save/restore
• Filter operator: Combine multiple filters with filter_op = "and" or filter_op = "or"
• Arrow IPC support: Optional arrow package integration for efficient serialization of large datasets
• Works everywhere: RStudio Viewer, R Markdown, Quarto, and Shiny

Shiny Demos

Two interactive demos are bundled with the package:

library(perspectiveR)
run_example()             # list all available demos
run_example("shiny-basic")
run_example("crud-table")

• shiny-basic — Streaming stock market line chart (DAX, SMI, CAC, FTSE 1991-1998) with a 100-row sliding window, Arrow IPC toggle, computed columns, and named state save/restore.
• crud-table — Editable indexed CRUD table with click events, add/update/delete rows by key, downloadable CSV/JSON export, and an update activity log.

Shiny Usage

library(shiny)
library(perspectiveR)

ui <- fluidPage(
  selectInput("dataset", "Dataset:",
    choices = c("mtcars", "iris", "airquality")
  ),
  perspectiveOutput("viewer", height = "600px")
)

server <- function(input, output, session) {
  output$viewer <- renderPerspective({
    data <- switch(input$dataset,
      "mtcars" = mtcars,
      "iris" = iris,
      "airquality" = airquality
    )
    perspective(data)
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

Proxy Functions

• psp_update(proxy, data) — append new rows (upserts when table has an index)
• psp_replace(proxy, data) — replace all data
• psp_clear(proxy) — clear all rows
• psp_restore(proxy, config) — apply a saved config
• psp_reset(proxy) — reset viewer to defaults
• psp_remove(proxy, keys) — remove rows by primary key (indexed tables)
• psp_export(proxy, format) — export data (JSON, CSV, columns, or Arrow); supports windowed export with start_row/end_row/start_col/end_col
• psp_save(proxy) — retrieve current viewer state
• psp_on_update(proxy, enable) — subscribe to data change events
• psp_schema(proxy) — get table schema (column names and types)
• psp_size(proxy) — get table row count
• psp_columns(proxy) — get table column names
• psp_validate_expressions(proxy, expressions) — validate expression strings

Related Projects

• Perspective — the upstream WebAssembly data visualization engine this package wraps
• GWalkR — interactive data exploration widget powered by Graphic Walker
• esquisse — drag-and-drop ggplot2 builder as a Shiny module

Building the JS Bundle

The pre-built JS bundle is included. To rebuild from source:

cd tools
npm install
npm run build
npm run copy-themes

License

Apache License 2.0

‘Perspective’ is a project of the OpenJS Foundation. perspectiveR is an independent community package and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the OpenJS Foundation.