rails-data-explorer

Rails-data-explorer is a Rails Engine plugin that makes it easy to explore the data in your app using charts and statistics.

All you have to do is to throw your data in table form at rails-data-explorer. Rails-data-explorer then analyzes your data and automatically renders suitable charts and descriptive statistics for each column. It offers tools for uni-, bi- and multi-variate analysis. It can even find correlations in your categorical data using Pearson's Chi Squared test.

See below for a screenshot of what you get.

Installation

gem install rails-data-explorer

or with bundler in your Gemfile:

gem 'rails-data-explorer'

Usage

Let's say you want to explore your app's User signup data. Create a route and action named 'signups' in app/controllers/users_controller.rb:

def signups
  # DANGER! Make sure not to load too much data into memory!
  user_data = User.all.to_a

  c_binner = RailsDataExplorer::Utils::DataBinner.new(
    '0' => 0,
    '1' => 1,
    '2' => 2,
    '3..10' => 10,
    '11..100' => 100,
    '101..1,000' => 1000,
    '1,001..10,000' => 10000
  )
  @rails_data_explorer = RailsDataExplorer.new(
    user_data,
    [
      {
        name: "Session duration [Minutes]",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row|
          ((row.session_duration_minutes * 100).round)/100.0
        },
      },
      {
        name: "Country",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row| row.country },
        multivariate: ['All'],
      },
      {
        name: "Sign in count",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row| c_binner.bin(row.sign_in_count) },
      },
      {
        name: "Language",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row| row.language },
        multivariate: ['All'],
      },
      {
        name: "Plan",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row| row.plan },
        multivariate: ['All'],
      },
      {
        name: "Sign up date",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row| row.created_at },
      },
      {
        name: "Sign up quarter",
        data_method: Proc.new { |row|
          year = row.created_at.year
          quarter = (row.created_at.month / 3.0).ceil
          "#{ year } / Q#{ quarter }"
        },
      },
    ]
  )
end

Then create a view at app/views/users/signups.html.erb:

<div class="rails-data-explorer">
  <h1>User signup data</h1>
  <%= @rails_data_explorer.render %>
</div>

With just a few lines of code you get comprehensive statistics and charts for your data:

Rails data exploration

Ways to shoot yourself in the foot

Loading too many DB rows at once: Remember that you are loading ActiveRecord objects, and they can use a lot of ram. It's a cartesian product of number of rows times columns per record. As a rule of thumb, for a medium sized model with 30 columns, you can load up to 10,000 rows.
Using expensive operations in the :data_method option for a given data series: As a rule of thumb, it should be ok to run simple methods that don't require DB access. Examples: #.to_s, if and case, and math operations should all be fine.
Declaring too many charts: The charts rendered are the sum of the following:
- univariate: one or more charts for each data series
- bivariate: the cartesian product of all data series in a bivariate group
- multivariate: one or more charts for each multivariate group I have tested it with 70 charts on a single page. More are probably ok, I just haven't tested it.
Drowning in detail: rails-data-explorer makes it easy to generate a large number of charts. Make sure you don't miss the important data in the noise.

Dependencies

ActionView >= 3.0
ActiveSupport >= 3.0
Asset pipeline (for batteries included, otherwise you'll have to pull in a number of assets manually)
jQuery??

Resources

License

MIT licensed.