How do I set the max and min of the x-axis of Vega-Lite time series chart?
Asked Answered
F

1

7

I'm making time series charts with Vega-Lite and I want to set the min and max values of the x-axis independent of the values that are being displayed. The reason is that I'm displaying multiple time series side by side in separate charts, and I want their x-axes to line up even when some series begin earlier than others.

I've found encoding.x.scale.domain, which seems like it's the right property to use. The documentation says that for temporal fields this should be a two element array of timestamps. However, it does not seem to matter what I set it to, my chart does not render any line, nor any ticks on the x-axis, and the warning Infinite extent for field "data": [Infinity, -Infinity]" is printed in the console.

Even more confusing is that I've been able to control the y-axis by setting encoding.y.scale.domain in the same way.

The following is a simplified version of the chart spec that I have experimented with in the Vega Editor. I'm trying to set the x-axis to start at an earlier point in time and end at a later point in time than the actual values:

{
  "$schema": "https://vega.github.io/schema/vega-lite/v4.json",
  "data": {
    "values": [
      {"ts": 1500400000000, "v": 1},
      {"ts": 1500500000000, "v": 2},
      {"ts": 1500600000000, "v": 3},
      {"ts": 1500700000000, "v": 2}
    ]
  },
  "width": 800,
  "height": 300,
  "mark": {"type": "line"},
  "encoding": {
    "x": {"field": "ts", "type": "temporal", "scale": {"domain": [1500000000000, 1500900000000]}},
    "y": {"field": "v", "type": "quantitative", "scale": {"domain": [0, 5]}}
  }
}

If I remove the encoding.x.scale.domain property it renders a line, but when including it I can't figure out any values that don't result in the warning.

Is this even the right way to set the min and max of the x-axis? Why does it work for the y-axis but not x-axis? What's the right way to do this?

Freeswimming answered 10/3, 2020 at 18:10 Comment(0)
M
4

What you tried is the correct way to specify temporal domains in Vega-Lite, but there is a bug in this behavior that was introduced in Vega-Lite 4.5. Here is the result of your spec using Vega-Lite 4.4:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm//vega@5"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm//[email protected]"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm//vega-embed@6"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="vis"></div>
  <script>
      var spec = {
        "$schema": "https://vega.github.io/schema/vega-lite/v4.json",
        "data": {
          "values": [
            {"ts": 1500400000000, "v": 1},
            {"ts": 1500500000000, "v": 2},
            {"ts": 1500600000000, "v": 3},
            {"ts": 1500700000000, "v": 2}
          ]
        },
        "width": 800,
        "height": 300,
        "mark": {"type": "line"},
        "encoding": {
          "x": {"field": "ts", "type": "temporal", "scale": {"domain": [1500000000000, 1500900000000]}},
          "y": {"field": "v", "type": "quantitative", "scale": {"domain": [0, 5]}}
        }
      };
      vegaEmbed("#vis", spec);
  </script>
</body>
</html>

enter image description here

I've filed a bug report at https://github.com/vega/vega-lite/issues/6060

Merciless answered 10/3, 2020 at 18:32 Comment(1)
Thank you. The issue has already been fixed too, that's great.Freeswimming

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