Getting started with the SDK

You'll need to have Node and NPM installed on your machine to install the Flourish SDK.

Install the SDK

npm install -g @flourish/sdk

Create a new template

flourish new my_template

Run a template

cd my_template and flourish run. Your project should now be running on localhost:1685. You should see an empty preview window and a settings panel on the right-hand side.

Edit a template

First, open src/index.js, and you'll see the top-level Flourish structure:

• the data object, that's where user-editable data tables will be stored
• the state object, which stores the visualization's current state
• the draw() function, which is called once when the visualization loads
• the update() function, which gets called every time the data or state changes

Publish a template

cd my_template and flourish publish

Next steps

You should have your first Flourish project up and running.

• For more information about which files were just created and what they do, have a look at the Flourish template file structure
• If you wish to explore more SDK commands beyond flourish new and flourish run, have a look at the SDK commands overview

In the next pages we are going to look at how the settings panel and data selection work.