Software Alternatives & Reviews

OpenLayers VS D3.js

Compare OpenLayers VS D3.js and see what are their differences

OpenLayers logo OpenLayers

A high-performance, feature-packed library for all your mapping needs.

D3.js logo D3.js

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.
  • OpenLayers Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-27
  • D3.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-11

D3 allows you to bind arbitrary data to a Document Object Model (DOM), and then apply data-driven transformations to the document. For example, you can use D3 to generate an HTML table from an array of numbers. Or, use the same data to create an interactive SVG bar chart with smooth transitions and interaction.

D3 is not a monolithic framework that seeks to provide every conceivable feature. Instead, D3 solves the crux of the problem: efficient manipulation of documents based on data. This avoids proprietary representation and affords extraordinary flexibility, exposing the full capabilities of web standards such as HTML, SVG, and CSS. With minimal overhead, D3 is extremely fast, supporting large datasets and dynamic behaviors for interaction and animation. D3’s functional style allows code reuse through a diverse collection of official and community-developed modules.

OpenLayers videos

Create Maps with Vector Tiles | OpenLayers | Mapbox GL JS

More videos:

  • Review - Membuat Peta Openlayers 3
  • Review - OpenLayers 3.x for Drupal

D3.js videos

Data Visualization with D3.js - Full Tutorial Course

More videos:

  • Review - Let's learn D3.js - D3 for data visualization (full course)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OpenLayers and D3.js)
Marketing Platform
100 100%
0% 0
Charting Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Business & Commerce
100 100%
0% 0
Data Visualization
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare OpenLayers and D3.js

OpenLayers Reviews

The Top 10 Alternatives to ArcGIS
OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data on a web page. It provides a powerful, easy-to-use API for creating dynamic maps and making interactive queries to spatial data servers. OpenLayers has been used in many high-profile projects, including Google Earth, Wikimedia Maps, and CartoWeb. If you’re interested in adding mapping functionality to...
Survey of the Best Online Mapping Tools for Web Developers: The Roadmap to Roadmaps
OpenLayers was developed by MetaCarta as an open source equivalent to Google Maps, and the first version was published in June 2006. OpenLayers is an onling mapping tool that implements a JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, with an API similar to the Google Maps API. OpenLayers gained a lot of traction very fast, and development in the...
Source: www.toptal.com

D3.js Reviews

6 JavaScript Charting Libraries for Powerful Data Visualizations in 2023
Depending on your requirements, the best JavaScript library is D3.js, as it’s by far the most customizable. However, it’s also really complex and difficult to master. Plus, it’s not as compatible with TypeScript as it is with JavaScript, which can be off-putting for some developers. If you’d prefer a less complex library that you can use with TypeScript, ECharts, and...
Source: embeddable.com
15 JavaScript Libraries for Creating Beautiful Charts
When we think of charting today, D3.js is the first name that comes up. Being an open source project, D3.js definitely brings many powerful features that were missing in most of the existing libraries. Features like dynamic properties, Enter and Exit, powerful transitions, and syntax familiarity with jQuery make it one the best JavaScript libraries for charting. Charts in...
Top 20 Javascript Libraries
D3 stands for Data-Driven Documents. With D3, you can apply data-driven transformations to DOM objects. The keyword with D3 is ‘data-driven,’ which means documents are manipulated depending on the data received. Data can be received in any format and bound with DOM objects. D3 is very fast and supports dynamic behavior for animation and interactions. There are plenty of...
Source: hackr.io
20+ JavaScript libraries to draw your own diagrams (2022 edition)
D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Right now, I would say is the most popular library of its kind.
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Another open source tool, D3.js is a JavaScript library for creating custom data visualizations in a web browser. Commonly known as D3, which stands for Data-Driven Documents, it uses web standards, such as HTML, Scalable Vector Graphics and CSS, instead of its own graphical vocabulary. D3's developers describe it as a dynamic and flexible tool that requires a minimum amount...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, D3.js should be more popular than OpenLayers. It has been mentiond 159 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OpenLayers mentions (28)

  • Zooming User Interface (ZUI)
    You probably know this, but in Google Maps at least, you can use browser zoom (ctrl/cmd +/-) to change the size of labels without zooming into the actual map. ------ Speaking of maps, I got to work a fun zoom project a few years ago: https://map.fieldmuseum.org/ We used https://openlayers.org/ and thought long and hard about how to best handle zooming and variable levels of information density & visual hierarchy.... - Source: Hacker News / 21 days ago
  • Handling files in enterprise web solutions
    In order to display the GeoJSON features on a map, we will use OpenLayers, which is a very powerful open-source mapping library that is also very simple to use. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • 5 JavaScript mapping APIs compared
    OpenLayers is a modular, high-performance library designed for displaying and interacting with maps and geospatial data. It is a free, open-source JS library released under the 2-Clause BSD License, facilitating the creation of interactive and feature-rich web maps. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • I'm a senior in my CS major and it's incredible I didn't hear about GIS projects until now. Glad to be here.
    For web maps I'd strongly recommend using OpenLayers. While it's less convenient to get started with compared to the alternatives it's also much more feature-complete and you'll likely hit a ceiling in terms of functionality much later than you would with the others. Source: 12 months ago
  • Show HN: Test, fix, and improve your ML models
    Tought this was about https://openlayers.org/, got confused for a moment. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
View more

D3.js mentions (159)

  • A visual guide to Vision Transformer – A scroll story
    Yes this was done with a combination of GSAP Scrolltrigger https://gsap.com/docs/v3/Plugins/ScrollTrigger/ and https://d3js.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 20 days ago
  • Full Stack Web Development Concept map
    d3 - very power visualization library enabling dynamic visualizations. docs. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Observable 2.0, a static site generator for data apps
    Yep, Evidence is doing good work. We were most directly inspired by VitePress; we spent months rewriting both D3’s docs (https://d3js.org) and Observable Plot’s docs (https://observablehq.com/plot) in VitePress, and absolutely loved the experience. But we wanted a tool focused on data apps, dashboards, reports — observability and business intelligence use cases rather than documentation. Compared to Evidence, I’d... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • What is the technology stack used to create these live charts?
    They are images so it could be any number of things, datawrapper, charts.js, d3.js to name a few options. Source: 5 months ago
  • Animated map showing frequency and location of births around the world [OC]
    I made this interactive visualization that attempts to show the real-time frequency and location of births around the world. A country’s annual births (i.e. The country’s population times its birthrate) were distributed across all of the populated locations in each country, weighted by the population distribution (i.e. More populated areas got a greater fraction of the births). Data Sources and... Source: 5 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing OpenLayers and D3.js, you can also consider the following products

AWS Snowball - AWS Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport service that uses secure devices to transfer large amounts of data into and out of the AWS cloud.

Chart.js - Easy, object oriented client side graphs for designers and developers.

Net Solutions - Net Solutions: Where innovation meets expertise. Award-winning digital solutions built for growth.

Plotly - Low-Code Data Apps

Fluper - Fluper: Top Mobile App Development Company in USA, UK, UAE & INDIA that Specialises in iPhone (iOS), Android & Web App Development Services at Affordable cost.

Highcharts - A charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application