Advanced View Operations

Beyond the standard query configuration, View provides additional methods for interacting with hierarchical results and introspecting data.

Tree Hierarchy Operations

When a View has group_by applied, the results form a tree hierarchy. Perspective provides methods to control which levels of the tree are expanded or collapsed:

javascript

const view = await table.view({ group_by: ["Region", "Country", "City"] });

// Collapse the tree at row index 5
await view.collapse(5);

// Expand the tree at row index 5
await view.expand(5);

// Set the expansion depth (0 = fully collapsed, 1 = first level, etc.)
await view.set_depth(1);

</div> <div class="python">

Using the sync API

python

view = table.view(group_by=["Region", "Country", "City"])

view.collapse(5)
view.expand(5)
view.set_depth(1)

</div> <div class="rust">

rust

let view = table.view(Some(ViewConfigUpdate {
    group_by: Some(vec!["Region".into(), "Country".into(), "City".into()]),
    ..ViewConfigUpdate::default()
})).await?;

view.collapse(5).await?;
view.expand(5).await?;
view.set_depth(1).await?;

</div>

<span class="warning">Perspective's built-in engine is lazy — aggregates for collapsed rows are not recalculated when the underlying Table is updated. Updates are only computed for rows that are currently visible (expanded). When a collapsed row is later expanded, its aggregates are calculated at that point.</span>

Column Range Queries

View::get_min_max returns the minimum and maximum values for a given column, which is useful for setting up scales in custom visualizations:

javascript

const [min, max] = await view.get_min_max("Sales");

</div> <div class="python">

python

min_val, max_val = view.get_min_max("Sales")

</div>

Expression Validation

Before creating a View with expressions, you can validate them against the table's schema using Table::validate_expressions. This returns information about which expressions are valid and their inferred types:

javascript

const result = await table.validate_expressions({
    expr1: '"Sales" + "Profit"',
    expr2: "invalid_column + 1",
});
// result.expression_schema contains valid expressions and their types
// result.errors contains invalid expressions and error messages

</div> <div class="python">

python

result = table.validate_expressions(['"Sales" + "Profit"', 'invalid + 1'])

</div>

View Dimensions

View::dimensions returns the number of rows and columns in the current view, including information about group-by header rows:

javascript

const dims = await view.dimensions();
// { num_view_rows, num_view_columns, num_table_rows, num_table_columns, ... }

</div> <div class="python">

python

dims = view.dimensions()

</div>

View Configuration Introspection

View::get_config returns the full configuration used to create the view:

javascript

const config = await view.get_config();
// { group_by: [...], split_by: [...], sort: [...], filter: [...], ... }

</div> <div class="python">

python

config = view.get_config()

</div>

Update Callbacks

javascript

view.on_update(
    (updated) => {
        console.log("View updated", updated.port_id);
    },
    { mode: "row" },
);

// Later, remove the callback
view.remove_update(callback);

</div> <div class="python">

python

def on_update(port_id, delta):
    print("View updated", port_id)

view.on_update(on_update, mode="row")
view.remove_update(on_update)

</div>

When mode is set to "row", the callback receives a delta of only the rows that changed (as Apache Arrow), which is useful for efficiently synchronizing tables across clients.

Flattening a View into a Table

In Javascript, a [Table] can be constructed on a [Table::view] instance, which will return a new [Table] based on the [Table::view]'s dataset, and all future updates that affect the [Table::view] will be forwarded to the new [Table]. This is particularly useful for implementing a Client/Server Replicated design, by serializing the View to an arrow and setting up an on_update callback.

javascript

const worker1 = perspective.worker();
const table = await worker.table(data);
const view = await table.view({ filter: [["State", "==", "Texas"]] });
const table2 = await worker.table(view);
table.update([{ State: "Texas", City: "Austin" }]);

</div> <div class="python">

python

table = perspective.Table(data);
view = table.view(filter=[["State", "==", "Texas"]])
table2 = perspective.Table(view.to_arrow());

def updater(port, delta):
    table2.update(delta)

view.on_update(updater, mode="Row")
table.update([{"State": "Texas", "City": "Austin"}])

</div> <div class="rust">

rust

let opts = TableInitOptions::default();
let data = TableData::Update(UpdateData::Csv("x,y\n1,2\n3,4".into()));
let table = client.table(data, opts).await?;
let view = table.view(None).await?;
let table2 = client.table(TableData::View(view)).await?;
table.update(data).await?;

</div>