Channel Options#

Some encoding channels allow for additional options to be expressed. These can control things like axis properties, scale properties, headers and titles, binning parameters, aggregation, sorting, and many more.

The section titles below refer to the channels introduced in Channels and show the accepted options for these channels.

X and Y#

The X and Y encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

axis

anyOf(Axis, null)

An object defining properties of axis’s gridlines, ticks and labels. If null, the axis for the encoding channel will be removed.

Default value: If undefined, default axis properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html>__ are applied.

See also: axis <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, string, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

impute

anyOf(ImputeParams, null)

An object defining the properties of the Impute Operation to be applied. The field value of the other positional channel is taken as key of the Impute Operation. The field of the color channel if specified is used as groupby of the Impute Operation.

See also: impute <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/impute.html>__ documentation.

scale

anyOf(Scale, null)

An object defining properties of the channel’s scale, which is the function that transforms values in the data domain (numbers, dates, strings, etc) to visual values (pixels, colors, sizes) of the encoding channels.

If null, the scale will be disabled and the data value will be directly encoded <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#disable>__.

Default value: If undefined, default scale properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ are applied.

See also: scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ documentation.

sort

Sort

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A string indicating an encoding channel name to sort by <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__ (e.g., "x" or "y") with an optional minus prefix for descending sort (e.g., "-x" to sort by x-field, descending). This channel string is short-form of a sort-by-encoding definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__. For example, "sort": "-x" is equivalent to "sort": {"encoding": "x", "order": "descending"}.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null and sorting by another channel is not supported for row and column.

See also: sort <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html>__ documentation.

stack

anyOf(StackOffset, null, boolean)

Type of stacking offset if the field should be stacked. stack is only applicable for x, y, theta, and radius channels with continuous domains. For example, stack of y can be used to customize stacking for a vertical bar chart.

stack can be one of the following values:

  • "zero" or true: stacking with baseline offset at zero value of the scale (for creating typical stacked bar <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#bar>__ and area <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#area>__ chart).

  • "normalize" - stacking with normalized domain (for creating normalized stacked bar and area charts <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#normalized>__ and pie charts with percentage tooltip <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/arc.html#tooltip>). -"center" - stacking with center baseline (for streamgraph <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#streamgraph>).

  • null or false - No-stacking. This will produce layered bar <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#layered-bar-chart>__ and area chart.

Default value: zero for plots with all of the following conditions are true: (1) the mark is bar, area, or arc; (2) the stacked measure channel (x or y) has a linear scale; (3) At least one of non-position channels mapped to an unaggregated field that is different from x and y. Otherwise, null by default.

See also: stack <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html>__ documentation.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Color, Fill, and Stroke#

The Color, Fill, and Stroke encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

condition

anyOf(ConditionalValueDef<(Gradient|string|null|ExprRef)>, array(ConditionalValueDef<(Gradient|string|null|ExprRef)>))

One or more value definition(s) with a parameter or a test predicate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html>__.

Note: A field definition’s condition property can only contain conditional value definitions <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html#value>__ since Vega-Lite only allows at most one encoded field per encoding channel.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

legend

anyOf(Legend, null)

An object defining properties of the legend. If null, the legend for the encoding channel will be removed.

Default value: If undefined, default legend properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ are applied.

See also: legend <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ documentation.

scale

anyOf(Scale, null)

An object defining properties of the channel’s scale, which is the function that transforms values in the data domain (numbers, dates, strings, etc) to visual values (pixels, colors, sizes) of the encoding channels.

If null, the scale will be disabled and the data value will be directly encoded <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#disable>__.

Default value: If undefined, default scale properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ are applied.

See also: scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ documentation.

sort

Sort

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A string indicating an encoding channel name to sort by <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__ (e.g., "x" or "y") with an optional minus prefix for descending sort (e.g., "-x" to sort by x-field, descending). This channel string is short-form of a sort-by-encoding definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__. For example, "sort": "-x" is equivalent to "sort": {"encoding": "x", "order": "descending"}.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null and sorting by another channel is not supported for row and column.

See also: sort <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html>__ documentation.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Shape#

The Shape encoding accepts the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

condition

anyOf(ConditionalValueDef<(string|null|ExprRef)>, array(ConditionalValueDef<(string|null|ExprRef)>))

One or more value definition(s) with a parameter or a test predicate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html>__.

Note: A field definition’s condition property can only contain conditional value definitions <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html#value>__ since Vega-Lite only allows at most one encoded field per encoding channel.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

legend

anyOf(Legend, null)

An object defining properties of the legend. If null, the legend for the encoding channel will be removed.

Default value: If undefined, default legend properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ are applied.

See also: legend <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ documentation.

scale

anyOf(Scale, null)

An object defining properties of the channel’s scale, which is the function that transforms values in the data domain (numbers, dates, strings, etc) to visual values (pixels, colors, sizes) of the encoding channels.

If null, the scale will be disabled and the data value will be directly encoded <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#disable>__.

Default value: If undefined, default scale properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ are applied.

See also: scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ documentation.

sort

Sort

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A string indicating an encoding channel name to sort by <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__ (e.g., "x" or "y") with an optional minus prefix for descending sort (e.g., "-x" to sort by x-field, descending). This channel string is short-form of a sort-by-encoding definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__. For example, "sort": "-x" is equivalent to "sort": {"encoding": "x", "order": "descending"}.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null and sorting by another channel is not supported for row and column.

See also: sort <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html>__ documentation.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

TypeForShape

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Order#

The Order encoding accepts the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, string, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

sort

SortOrder

The sort order. One of "ascending" (default) or "descending".

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Angle, FillOpacity, Opacity, Size, StrokeOpacity, and StrokeWidth#

The Angle, FillOpacity, Opacity, Size, StrokeOpacity, and StrokeWidth encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

condition

anyOf(ConditionalValueDef<(number|ExprRef)>, array(ConditionalValueDef<(number|ExprRef)>))

One or more value definition(s) with a parameter or a test predicate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html>__.

Note: A field definition’s condition property can only contain conditional value definitions <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html#value>__ since Vega-Lite only allows at most one encoded field per encoding channel.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

legend

anyOf(Legend, null)

An object defining properties of the legend. If null, the legend for the encoding channel will be removed.

Default value: If undefined, default legend properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ are applied.

See also: legend <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ documentation.

scale

anyOf(Scale, null)

An object defining properties of the channel’s scale, which is the function that transforms values in the data domain (numbers, dates, strings, etc) to visual values (pixels, colors, sizes) of the encoding channels.

If null, the scale will be disabled and the data value will be directly encoded <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#disable>__.

Default value: If undefined, default scale properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ are applied.

See also: scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ documentation.

sort

Sort

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A string indicating an encoding channel name to sort by <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__ (e.g., "x" or "y") with an optional minus prefix for descending sort (e.g., "-x" to sort by x-field, descending). This channel string is short-form of a sort-by-encoding definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__. For example, "sort": "-x" is equivalent to "sort": {"encoding": "x", "order": "descending"}.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null and sorting by another channel is not supported for row and column.

See also: sort <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html>__ documentation.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

StrokeDash#

The StrokeDash encoding accepts the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

condition

anyOf(ConditionalValueDef<(number[]|ExprRef)>, array(ConditionalValueDef<(number[]|ExprRef)>))

One or more value definition(s) with a parameter or a test predicate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html>__.

Note: A field definition’s condition property can only contain conditional value definitions <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html#value>__ since Vega-Lite only allows at most one encoded field per encoding channel.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

legend

anyOf(Legend, null)

An object defining properties of the legend. If null, the legend for the encoding channel will be removed.

Default value: If undefined, default legend properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ are applied.

See also: legend <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/legend.html>__ documentation.

scale

anyOf(Scale, null)

An object defining properties of the channel’s scale, which is the function that transforms values in the data domain (numbers, dates, strings, etc) to visual values (pixels, colors, sizes) of the encoding channels.

If null, the scale will be disabled and the data value will be directly encoded <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#disable>__.

Default value: If undefined, default scale properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ are applied.

See also: scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ documentation.

sort

Sort

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A string indicating an encoding channel name to sort by <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__ (e.g., "x" or "y") with an optional minus prefix for descending sort (e.g., "-x" to sort by x-field, descending). This channel string is short-form of a sort-by-encoding definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__. For example, "sort": "-x" is equivalent to "sort": {"encoding": "x", "order": "descending"}.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null and sorting by another channel is not supported for row and column.

See also: sort <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html>__ documentation.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Row and Column#

The Row and Column, and Facet encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

align

LayoutAlign

The alignment to apply to row/column facet’s subplot. The supported string values are "all", "each", and "none".

  • For "none", a flow layout will be used, in which adjacent subviews are simply placed one after the other.

  • For "each", subviews will be aligned into a clean grid structure, but each row or column may be of variable size.

  • For "all", subviews will be aligned and each row or column will be sized identically based on the maximum observed size. String values for this property will be applied to both grid rows and columns.

Default value: "all".

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

center

boolean

Boolean flag indicating if facet’s subviews should be centered relative to their respective rows or columns.

Default value: false

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

header

anyOf(Header, null)

An object defining properties of a facet’s header.

sort

anyOf(SortArray, SortOrder, EncodingSortField, null)

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null is not supported for row and column.

spacing

number

The spacing in pixels between facet’s sub-views.

Default value: Depends on "spacing" property of the view composition configuration <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#view-config>__ (20 by default)

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Facet#

The Facet encoding accepts the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

align

anyOf(LayoutAlign, RowCol<LayoutAlign>)

The alignment to apply to grid rows and columns. The supported string values are "all", "each", and "none".

  • For "none", a flow layout will be used, in which adjacent subviews are simply placed one after the other.

  • For "each", subviews will be aligned into a clean grid structure, but each row or column may be of variable size.

  • For "all", subviews will be aligned and each row or column will be sized identically based on the maximum observed size. String values for this property will be applied to both grid rows and columns.

Alternatively, an object value of the form {"row": string, "column": string} can be used to supply different alignments for rows and columns.

Default value: "all".

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

bounds

[‘full’, ‘flush’]

The bounds calculation method to use for determining the extent of a sub-plot. One of full (the default) or flush.

  • If set to full, the entire calculated bounds (including axes, title, and legend) will be used.

  • If set to flush, only the specified width and height values for the sub-view will be used. The flush setting can be useful when attempting to place sub-plots without axes or legends into a uniform grid structure.

Default value: "full"

center

anyOf(boolean, RowCol<boolean>)

Boolean flag indicating if subviews should be centered relative to their respective rows or columns.

An object value of the form {"row": boolean, "column": boolean} can be used to supply different centering values for rows and columns.

Default value: false

columns

number

The number of columns to include in the view composition layout.

Default value: undefined – An infinite number of columns (a single row) will be assumed. This is equivalent to hconcat (for concat) and to using the column channel (for facet and repeat).

Note:

  1. This property is only for:

  • the general (wrappable) concat operator (not hconcat/vconcat)

  • the facet and repeat operator with one field/repetition definition (without row/column nesting)

  1. Setting the columns to 1 is equivalent to vconcat (for concat) and to using the row channel (for facet and repeat).

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

header

anyOf(Header, null)

An object defining properties of a facet’s header.

sort

anyOf(SortArray, SortOrder, EncodingSortField, null)

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null is not supported for row and column.

spacing

anyOf(number, RowCol<number>)

The spacing in pixels between sub-views of the composition operator. An object of the form {"row": number, "column": number} can be used to set different spacing values for rows and columns.

Default value: Depends on "spacing" property of the view composition configuration <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#view-config>__ (20 by default)

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Text#

The Text encoding accepts the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, string, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

condition

anyOf(ConditionalValueDef<(Text|ExprRef)>, array(ConditionalValueDef<(Text|ExprRef)>))

One or more value definition(s) with a parameter or a test predicate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html>__.

Note: A field definition’s condition property can only contain conditional value definitions <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html#value>__ since Vega-Lite only allows at most one encoded field per encoding channel.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

format

anyOf(string, Dict)

When used with the default "number" and "time" format type, the text formatting pattern for labels of guides (axes, legends, headers) and text marks.

  • If the format type is "number" (e.g., for quantitative fields), this is D3’s number format pattern <https://github.com/d3/d3-format#locale_format>__.

  • If the format type is "time" (e.g., for temporal fields), this is D3’s time format pattern <https://github.com/d3/d3-time-format#locale_format>__.

See the format documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/format.html>__ for more examples.

When used with a custom formatType <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#custom-format-type>__, this value will be passed as format alongside datum.value to the registered function.

Default value: Derived from numberFormat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#format>__ config for number format and from timeFormat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#format>__ config for time format.

formatType

string

The format type for labels. One of "number", "time", or a registered custom format type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#custom-format-type>__.

Default value:

  • "time" for temporal fields and ordinal and nominal fields with timeUnit.

  • "number" for quantitative fields as well as ordinal and nominal fields without timeUnit.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Href, Tooltip, Url#

The Href, Tooltip, and Url encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, string, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

condition

anyOf(ConditionalValueDef<(string|ExprRef)>, array(ConditionalValueDef<(string|ExprRef)>))

One or more value definition(s) with a parameter or a test predicate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html>__.

Note: A field definition’s condition property can only contain conditional value definitions <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/condition.html#value>__ since Vega-Lite only allows at most one encoded field per encoding channel.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

format

anyOf(string, Dict)

When used with the default "number" and "time" format type, the text formatting pattern for labels of guides (axes, legends, headers) and text marks.

  • If the format type is "number" (e.g., for quantitative fields), this is D3’s number format pattern <https://github.com/d3/d3-format#locale_format>__.

  • If the format type is "time" (e.g., for temporal fields), this is D3’s time format pattern <https://github.com/d3/d3-time-format#locale_format>__.

See the format documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/format.html>__ for more examples.

When used with a custom formatType <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#custom-format-type>__, this value will be passed as format alongside datum.value to the registered function.

Default value: Derived from numberFormat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#format>__ config for number format and from timeFormat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#format>__ config for time format.

formatType

string

The format type for labels. One of "number", "time", or a registered custom format type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#custom-format-type>__.

Default value:

  • "time" for temporal fields and ordinal and nominal fields with timeUnit.

  • "number" for quantitative fields as well as ordinal and nominal fields without timeUnit.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Detail#

The Detail encoding accepts the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, string, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Latitude and Longitude#

The Latitude and Longitude encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

null

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

string

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Radius and Theta#

The Radius and Theta encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

anyOf(boolean, BinParams, string, null)

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

scale

anyOf(Scale, null)

An object defining properties of the channel’s scale, which is the function that transforms values in the data domain (numbers, dates, strings, etc) to visual values (pixels, colors, sizes) of the encoding channels.

If null, the scale will be disabled and the data value will be directly encoded <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#disable>__.

Default value: If undefined, default scale properties <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ are applied.

See also: scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html>__ documentation.

sort

Sort

Sort order for the encoded field.

For continuous fields (quantitative or temporal), sort can be either "ascending" or "descending".

For discrete fields, sort can be one of the following:

  • "ascending" or "descending" – for sorting by the values’ natural order in JavaScript.

  • A string indicating an encoding channel name to sort by <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__ (e.g., "x" or "y") with an optional minus prefix for descending sort (e.g., "-x" to sort by x-field, descending). This channel string is short-form of a sort-by-encoding definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-by-encoding>__. For example, "sort": "-x" is equivalent to "sort": {"encoding": "x", "order": "descending"}.

  • A sort field definition <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-field>__ for sorting by another field.

  • An array specifying the field values in preferred order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#sort-array>. In this case, the sort order will obey the values in the array, followed by any unspecified values in their original order. For discrete time field, values in the sort array can be date-time definition objects <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>. In addition, for time units "month" and "day", the values can be the month or day names (case insensitive) or their 3-letter initials (e.g., "Mon", "Tue").

  • null indicating no sort.

Default value: "ascending"

Note: null and sorting by another channel is not supported for row and column.

See also: sort <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html>__ documentation.

stack

anyOf(StackOffset, null, boolean)

Type of stacking offset if the field should be stacked. stack is only applicable for x, y, theta, and radius channels with continuous domains. For example, stack of y can be used to customize stacking for a vertical bar chart.

stack can be one of the following values:

  • "zero" or true: stacking with baseline offset at zero value of the scale (for creating typical stacked bar <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#bar>__ and area <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#area>__ chart).

  • "normalize" - stacking with normalized domain (for creating normalized stacked bar and area charts <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#normalized>__ and pie charts with percentage tooltip <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/arc.html#tooltip>). -"center" - stacking with center baseline (for streamgraph <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#streamgraph>).

  • null or false - No-stacking. This will produce layered bar <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html#layered-bar-chart>__ and area chart.

Default value: zero for plots with all of the following conditions are true: (1) the mark is bar, area, or arc; (2) the stacked measure channel (x or y) has a linear scale; (3) At least one of non-position channels mapped to an unaggregated field that is different from x and y. Otherwise, null by default.

See also: stack <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/stack.html>__ documentation.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.

type

StandardType

The type of measurement ("quantitative", "temporal", "ordinal", or "nominal") for the encoded field or constant value (datum). It can also be a "geojson" type for encoding 'geoshape' <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/geoshape.html>__.

Vega-Lite automatically infers data types in many cases as discussed below. However, type is required for a field if: (1) the field is not nominal and the field encoding has no specified aggregate (except argmin and argmax), bin, scale type, custom sort order, nor timeUnit or (2) if you wish to use an ordinal scale for a field with bin or timeUnit.

Default value:

  1. For a data field, "nominal" is the default data type unless the field encoding has aggregate, channel, bin, scale type, sort, or timeUnit that satisfies the following criteria:

  • "quantitative" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains bin or aggregate except "argmin" and "argmax", (2) the encoding channel is latitude or longitude channel or (3) if the specified scale type is a quantitative scale <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/scale.html#type>__.

  • "temporal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains timeUnit or (2) the specified scale type is a time or utc scale

  • "ordinal" is the default type if (1) the encoded field contains a custom sort order <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/sort.html#specifying-custom-sort-order>__, (2) the specified scale type is an ordinal/point/band scale, or (3) the encoding channel is order.

  1. For a constant value in data domain (datum):

  • "quantitative" if the datum is a number

  • "nominal" if the datum is a string

  • "temporal" if the datum is a date time object <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/datetime.html>__

Note:

  • Data type describes the semantics of the data rather than the primitive data types (number, string, etc.). The same primitive data type can have different types of measurement. For example, numeric data can represent quantitative, ordinal, or nominal data.

  • Data values for a temporal field can be either a date-time string (e.g., "2015-03-07 12:32:17", "17:01", "2015-03-16". "2015") or a timestamp number (e.g., 1552199579097).

  • When using with bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>, the type property can be either "quantitative" (for using a linear bin scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal bin scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>, the type property can be either "temporal" (default, for using a temporal scale) or "ordinal" (for using an ordinal scale) <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast-bin>.

  • When using with aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__, the type property refers to the post-aggregation data type. For example, we can calculate count distinct of a categorical field "cat" using {"aggregate": "distinct", "field": "cat"}. The "type" of the aggregate output is "quantitative".

  • Secondary channels (e.g., x2, y2, xError, yError) do not have type as they must have exactly the same type as their primary channels (e.g., x, y).

See also: type <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html>__ documentation.

Latitude2, Longitude2, Radius2, Theta2, X2, Y2, XError, YError, XError2, and YError2#

The Latitude2, Longitude2, Radius2, Theta2, X2, Y2, XError, YError, XError2, and YError2 encodings accept the following options:

Click to show table

Property

Type

Description

aggregate

Aggregate

Aggregation function for the field (e.g., "mean", "sum", "median", "min", "max", "count").

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: aggregate <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/aggregate.html>__ documentation.

bandPosition

number

Relative position on a band of a stacked, binned, time unit, or band scale. For example, the marks will be positioned at the beginning of the band if set to 0, and at the middle of the band if set to 0.5.

bin

null

A flag for binning a quantitative field, an object defining binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__, or indicating that the data for x or y channel are binned before they are imported into Vega-Lite ("binned").

  • If true, default binning parameters <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html#bin-parameters>__ will be applied.

  • If "binned", this indicates that the data for the x (or y) channel are already binned. You can map the bin-start field to x (or y) and the bin-end field to x2 (or y2). The scale and axis will be formatted similar to binning in Vega-Lite. To adjust the axis ticks based on the bin step, you can also set the axis’s tickMinStep <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/axis.html#ticks>__ property.

Default value: false

See also: bin <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/bin.html>__ documentation.

field

Field

Required. A string defining the name of the field from which to pull a data value or an object defining iterated values from the repeat <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/repeat.html>__ operator.

See also: field <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__ documentation.

Notes: 1) Dots (.) and brackets ([ and ]) can be used to access nested objects (e.g., "field": "foo.bar" and "field": "foo['bar']"). If field names contain dots or brackets but are not nested, you can use \\ to escape dots and brackets (e.g., "a\\.b" and "a\\[0\\]"). See more details about escaping in the field documentation <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/field.html>__. 2) field is not required if aggregate is count.

timeUnit

anyOf(TimeUnit, BinnedTimeUnit, TimeUnitParams)

Time unit (e.g., year, yearmonth, month, hours) for a temporal field. or a temporal field that gets casted as ordinal <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/type.html#cast>__.

Default value: undefined (None)

See also: timeUnit <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/timeunit.html>__ documentation.

title

anyOf(Text, null)

A title for the field. If null, the title will be removed.

Default value: derived from the field’s name and transformation function (aggregate, bin and timeUnit). If the field has an aggregate function, the function is displayed as part of the title (e.g., "Sum of Profit"). If the field is binned or has a time unit applied, the applied function is shown in parentheses (e.g., "Profit (binned)", "Transaction Date (year-month)"). Otherwise, the title is simply the field name.

Notes:

  1. You can customize the default field title format by providing the fieldTitle <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html#top-level-config>__ property in the config <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/docs/config.html>__ or fieldTitle function via the compile function's options <https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/usage/compile.html#field-title>__.

  2. If both field definition’s title and axis, header, or legend title are defined, axis/header/legend title will be used.