How to build a Facebook dashboard with React.js
Course overview
This course is devoted to the basics of data visualization including geo-visualization using D3.js JavaScript library. We are going to build a simple dashboard containing bar chart and map data distribution collected from Facebook pages with the help of Facebook API and Python tools for interaction with them. All obtained data we will need storage in MongoDB. Within this course, you will also learn the full stack of others popular and common used technologies like Flask, ReactJS, HTML5, CCS3, Bootstrap, etc.
This course consists of not an only practical usage of the mentioned tools; we are meeting you with central concepts of data visualization and the principles of the work with using frameworks and libraries. We suppose that the student has the necessary knowledge in Python and JavaScript on the level of understanding of functions.
What you'll learn
The course is conditionally divided into main parts. In the first one, you will work with Facebook API, fetch data from Facebook pages using Python and save it into the MongoDB database. We show how to write queries to get content of Facebook pages and accounts, how to process requests with the help of Python and its specific libraries. We will also demonstrate the main possibilities of MongoDB and how and when it may be successfully used.
In the second part of the course, we meet you with the perfect visualization library D3.js and one of the commonly used JavaScript frameworks for the development of single-page web applications ReactJS. You will build a dashboard with interactive bar and map charts using collected Facebook data. Among other things, we will learn main features of a D3.js library such as SVG objects and its attributes, scaling, mouse events, transitions, etc., consider the particularities of TopoJSON file format for collecting geodata.
The theoretical and practical materials concerning ReactJS framework include directives, services, controllers, data binding, dependency injection pattern and are supplemented with many illustrative examples. Thus, the content of this course is designed for you to learn main approaches and the most popular and useful tools of data visualization, so you will be able to process data correctly and easily build beautiful, alive and informative charts.
Syllabus
WEEK 1. Facebook REST API introduction
WEEK 2. Introduction to MongoDB & building REST application with Flask framework
WEEK 3. Introduction to D3.js and ReactJS
WEEK 4. Building d3.js visualization