# \[ANN\] Announcing ElectronDisplay.jl

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-announcing-electrondisplay-jl/20778>\
**Category:** Package Announcements\
**Tags:** announcement\
**Created:** [February 14, 2019, 6:13am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-announcing-electrondisplay-jl/20778 "2019-02-14T06:13:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![davidanthoff](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/davidanthoff/32/223493_2.png) [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 6:13am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-announcing-electrondisplay-jl/20778/1 "2019-02-14T06:13:19Z")

</div>

[ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) is a package that provides a simple UI based on [Electron](https://electronjs.org/) for displaying plots and tabular data. It works with most plotting packages and almost all data structures that represent tabular data in the Julia ecosystem. The package is a core piece of the [Queryverse](https://github.com/queryverse).

## Plot display

Anytime you load [ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) via `using ElectonDisplay`, it automatically becomes the default display for you current Julia session. From that moment on, whenever you display a figure from any of the supported plotting packages, it will show up in a window that is managed by [ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl). Any plotting package that hooks into the standard Julia [multimedia I/O](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1.1/base/io-network/#Multimedia-I/O-1) API will work with this setup, as long as it supports either the PNG or SVG format with its `show` method.

[ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) provides more tightly integrated support for [PlotlyJS.jl](https://github.com/sglyon/PlotlyJS.jl) and [VegaLite.jl](https://github.com/fredo-dedup/VegaLite.jl): plots from both packages support a full range of interactive features inside the window that [ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) opens for them.

Here is a simple example of how this works. Executing the following example code

```julia

julia> using VegaLite, VegaDatasets, ElectronDisplay

julia> dataset("cars") |> @vlplot(:point, x=:Acceleration, y=:Miles_per_Gallon, color=:Origin)

```

will open a window that displays this plot:

 ![electrondisplay-screenshot-vegalite](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/d/9/d98dc40d89284c38784814b1d12c82adc8e02cfa.png)

## Table display

Thanks to @tkf fantastic recent contribution, [ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) now also has support for showing tabular data in a grid. To display a table in that way, you simply pass it to the `electrondisplay` function, and it will show in a new window.

The following example demonstrates how easy it is to display a `DataFrame`:

```julia

julia> using DataFrames, ElectronDisplay

julia> df = DataFrame(a=rand(100), b=rand(100), c=rand(100));

julia> electrondisplay(df)

```

The table view works with almost any tabular source, not just [DataFrames.jl](https://github.com/JuliaData/DataFrames.jl). For example, here we are showing the result of a [Query.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/Query.jl) query directly in the grid, without ever materializing it into a `DataFrame`:

```julia

julia> using VegaDatasets, Query, ElectronDisplay

julia> dataset("cars") |>
       @filter(_.Origin=="USA") |>
       @select(-:Miles_per_Gallon) |>
       electrondisplay

```

And the results are shown in a window like this:

 ![electrondisplay-screenshot-grid](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/b/6/b637e851934804c93e163de1a1b1fe62a53d6f5c.png)

The table display in [ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) works for any source that either supports a `show` method for the `application/vnd.dataresource+json` MIME type, or implements the [TableTraits.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/TableTraits.jl) interface. Anything that iterates named tuples automatically is a [TableTraits.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/TableTraits.jl) source, so even packages that have never heard of either option might well work with [ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl).

## Summary

[ElectronDisplay.jl](https://github.com/queryverse/ElectronDisplay.jl) is probably most useful for people that work directly in the Julia REPL and not in one of the more fully feature IDEs. It is also a very young package, and any help with the package would be most welcome! I have created a few issues with ideas for improvements, but I am sure there are many more. I think this could be a project where someone with web UI experience could really contribute significantly.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chakravala](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chakravala/32/6832_2.png) [@chakravala](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/chakravala)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 6:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-announcing-electrondisplay-jl/20778/2 "2019-02-14T18:10:13Z")

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Does it load fast? How does the performance compare with others?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![davidanthoff](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/davidanthoff/32/223493_2.png) [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-announcing-electrondisplay-jl/20778/3 "2019-02-14T18:56:24Z")

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> [@chakravala](#):
>
> Does it load fast?

```julia
julia> @time using ElectronDisplay
  0.820250 seconds (1.33 M allocations: 67.893 MiB, 1.59% gc time)

```

on my machine. We haven’t optimized performance so far, but there is generally not much happening at startup and the dependencies are pretty modest.

> [@chakravala](#):
>
> How does the performance compare with others?

I’m not sure what one should compare it to, really… For plotting packages, really all it does is that instead of opening a plot in a browser window (which a lot of plotting packages seem to be doing by default), it will open in an Electron Window. My subjective sense is that performance for that is pretty comparable.

The grid display I haven’t compared with anything else and don’t really have a sense how that performs.

But, all of this should be easy to try out, and any reports back would be welcome!