Book description
Acquire finesse with CTools features and build rich and custom analytics solutions using Pentaho
About This Book
- Learn everything you need to know to make the most of CTools
- Create interactive and remarkable dashboards using the CTools
- Understand how to use and create data visualizations that can make the difference
- The author of our book works for Pentaho as a Senior Consultant
- Acts as a follow-up to Packt's previously published products on Pentaho such as Pentaho Business Analytics Cookbook, Pentaho Analytics for MongoDB, Pentaho Data Integration Cookbook - Second Edition, and Pentaho Reporting [Video]
- Our book is based on the latest version of Pentaho, that is, 6.0
Who This Book Is For
If you are a CTools developer and would like to expand your knowledge and create attractive dashboards and frameworks, this book is the go-to-guide for you. A basic knowledge of JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is highly recommended.
What You Will Learn
- Install Community Tools on Pentaho; and understand the necessary concepts and considerations when creating an exciting dashboard design
- Get data from many different Pentaho datasources and deliver it in different formats (CSV, XLS, XML, or JSON)
- Use the Community Data Access (CDA) as the data abstraction layer and understand the concepts in the Community Dashboard Framework (CDF)
- Create a Community Dashboard Editor (CDE) dashboard and make the most of the main components
- Create and make use of widgets and use duplicate components to have data-driven sections on the dashboard
- Customize and create interaction between all components, including charts, using the Community Charts Components
- Create and embed dashboards in a better and new way
- Create plugins and make use of parameters inside Pentaho without writing code
In Detail
Pentaho and CTools are two of the fastest and most rapidly growing tools for practical solutions not found in any other tool available on the market. Using Pentaho allows you to build a complete analytics solution, and CTools brings an advanced flexibility to customizing them in a remarkable way. CTools provides its users with the ability to utilize Web technologies and data visualization concepts, and make the most of best practices to create a huge visual impact.
The book starts with the basics of the framework and how to get data to your dashboards. We'll take you all the way through to create your custom and advanced dashboards that will create an effective visual impact and provide the best user experience. You will be given deep insights into the lifecycle of dashboards and the working of various components. Further, you will create a custom dashboard using the Community Dashboards Editor and use datasources to load data on the components. You will also create custom content using Query, the Freeform Addins Popup, and text components. Next, you will make use of widgets to create similar sections and duplicate components to reproduce other components on a dashboard. You will then learn to build a plugin without writing Java code, use Sparkl as a CPK plugin manager, and understand the application of deployment and version control to dashboard development. Finally, you will learn tips and tricks that can be very useful while embedding dashboards into other applications.
This guide is an invaluable tutorial if you are planning to use custom and advanced dashboards among the solutions that you are building with Pentaho.
Style and approach
This book is a pragmatic, easy-to-follow guide that provides theoretical concepts, ideas, and tricks to better understand the necessary theoretical concepts. It also provides you with a set of highly intriguing samples of dashboards with customized code within them that can be utilized for future projects.
Table of contents
-
Learning Pentaho CTools
- Table of Contents
- Learning Pentaho CTools
- Credits
- About the Author
- About the Reviewers
- www.PacktPub.com
- Preface
- 1. Getting Started with CTools
- 2. Acquiring Data with CDA
-
3. Building the Dashboard Using CDF
- Understanding the basics of a CDF dashboard
- Using components inside the dashboards
- Defining data sources for components
- Creating and using parameters in data sources
- The importance of listeners inside the components
- Interaction between components
- Using preExecution and postExecution
- Understanding how to work with postFetch
- Using preChange and postChange
- Priority of component execution
- Available components and properties
- Adding resources – JavaScript and CSS
- Dashboards utilities
- Dashboard storage
- Dashboard context
- Useful functions of the CDF API
- Summary
- 4. Leverage the Process with CDE
- 5. Applying Filters to the Dashboard
- 6. Tables, Templates, Exports, and Text Components
-
7. Advanced Concepts Using CDF and CDE
- References to components, parameters, and layout elements
- The query and freeform components
- Creating add-ins
- The template add-in
- Extending CDF and CDE with new components
- Extending or creating new dashboard types
- Creating a new dashboard style/template
- Bookmarkable parameters
- Internationalization and localization
- The dashboard component
- Summary
-
8. Visualizations Using CCC
- Some background on CCC
- Making use of the CCC library in a CDF dashboard
- Mandatory and desirable properties
- Mapping data
- Making use of CCC in CDE
- Changing properties in preExecution or postFetch
- Handling the click event
- Internationalization of CCC Charts
- What are extension points and how do you use them?
- Formatting a basis axis label based on the scale
- Customizing tooltips
- Pie chart showing the value in the center
- Dimensions
- Debugging the CCC charts
- CGG – Community Graphics Generator
- References
- Summary
- 9. Pentaho App Builder
- 10. Embed, Deploy, and Debug
- Index
Product information
- Title: Learning Pentaho CTools
- Author(s):
- Release date: May 2016
- Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
- ISBN: 9781785283420
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