D3 Start to Finish (2nd edition) teaches you how to build a custom, interactive and beautiful data visualisation using the JavaScript library D3.js (versions 6 and 7).

The book covers D3 concepts such as selections, joins, requests, scale functions, event handling and transitions. It also covers general web development techniques such as state management and modularisation. In other words, everything you need to know to build a real world, custom data visualisation.

You'll also learn how these concepts are put into practice by seeing how an interactive data visualisation called Energy Explorer is built. This is a custom data visualisation that visualises the energy mix of 141 countries. There are 15 separate build steps and you're taken through each step in detail. There's also a code download link for all 15 steps.

The 2nd edition supports ES modules. It's generally revised and updated from the original edition. It also includes appendices on data transformation and adding responsivity and dark mode to Energy Explorer.

Some of the topics covered are:

requesting CSV data using D3
D3 data joins (including joining nested data)
architecting a data visualisation using a layout function
detailed styling using CSS
adding a tooltip using the Tippy.js library
state management
animations using D3 transitions
data manipulation using Lodash
adding a menu, legend and footer
ES modules
how to transform the raw data from the World Bank into the required format
how to make Energy Explorer responsive to different device widths
how to add a dark mode to Energy Explorer
To get the most out of this book you need to be familiar with HTML, SVG, CSS and JavaScript. If you need to get up to speed with these languages I recommend my book Fundamentals of HTML, CSS, SVG & JavaScript for Data Visualisation. I've bundled both books together at a reduced cost (visit bundle).

You also need a text editor (such as VS Code), a web browser and Node.js installed on your computer. The book contains appendices that help you get these set up.