Imagine you have a complex data visualization created using D3. You want to go beyond just basic shapes like rectangles and instead build units with different graphics elements, such as rectangles, triangles, text labels, and background rectangles grouped together.
Typically, you would use
var unit = d3.select('.unit').data(units).enter().append('g')
to create these containers. But how can you add inner content without duplicating items on each data update by simply using unit.append('rect')
? It's not ideal to check if an element exists before appending it with if (!unit.select('.label').size()){//append the element} else {//update existing element}
.
When dealing with multiple elements inside a unit, using all those if..then
statements can quickly become messy. Is there a more efficient way to handle situations like this?